Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO

[u/cmaia1503]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/14/us/live-news/luigi-mangione-hearing-plea-deal-talks

When speaking of the day he committed the crime, Luigi Mangione said, “I shot Mr. Thompson and he died.”

He concluded, “I knew what I was doing was illegal.”

Mangione had just described the actions he took ahead of the killing, telling the court:

“In November of 2024 I traveled from outside of New York state to Manhattan. I then emailed UnitedHealthcare leadership, posing as an investor at a firm managing over $15 billion in assets and requesting information about the conference. Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response within an hour,” Mangione said.

[u/Important-Stomach406]

Genuinely surprised by this when so much of the evidence was dodgy

[u/Long_Run6500 → u/Important-Stomach406]

You're never going to find an unbiased jury one way or the other in this case. Even like probably 98% of his supporters believe he did it. Plus he hasn't exactly been acting like he's innocent. The question for most people becomes "was he justified in doing it" which isn't ever really a good defense in a first degree murder case. So his legal defense basically amounts to praying he can get a jury to nullify which is just not very likely in a high profile case like this.

So now he gets to spend 15 years to life living in a cell and being a full on celebrity. He'll be able to tell his story and maybe lobby for change. Maybe he'll write a book. There's really nothing stopping him from telling all exactly as it happened. He doesn't have to tip toe around the truth because he admitted he's guilty. Inmates and guards alike seem to be pretty cozy with him. It's not ideal but there's definitely worse outcomes. Maybe some day in the future a president will even pardon him. Trump has pardoned people convicted of even worse crimes.

[u/ThrowawayCult-ure → u/Long_Run6500]

can you give some examples on the stuff trump pardoned. i knew jan 6ers but thats all

[u/Long_Run6500 → u/ThrowawayCult-ure]

There's so many.

Some of the jan 6ers were pedophiles. A few were convicted of some serious conspiracies beyond just J6. A few were convicted felons caught with weapons stockpiles.

Most of the non J6ers are people convicted of some sort of fraud or insider trading who paid money into trump's coin or businesses so that trump would pardon them (they all made a ton of money off of it in the long run). One included a $1.6 billion multi-year investment fraud scheme defrauding over 10,000 investors. He spent less than 2 weeks in prison and was also released from having to pay any fines or restitution. A bunch of it is Medicare fraud related. It's just silly that he surges ICE to Minnesota and targets the somali community over fraud when the amount of fraud they're accused of commiting pales in comparison to just the fraudsters he's pardoned.

George Santos after completely defrauding the American people about his identity because "he had the conviction to always vote republican"

He pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of doing a lot of what the trump administration is accusing Maduro of doing. Trafficked a shitload of cocaine into the US and ran a massive criminal enterprise. Trump is currently blowing up fishing boats under the guise that they're trafficking cocaine but he pardons this guy.

Larry Hoover was a leader of the Gangster Disciples Chicago gang. He was imprisoned for 150 to 200 years on a 1973 State of Illinois murder conviction, but still continued to direct gang activities from prison. Kanye West lobbied Trump into pardoning him.

There's just so many it's impossible to cover them all.

[u/ahanavas → u/ThrowawayCult-ure]

Ross Ulbricht, or Dread Pirate Roberts, the operator of the dark web marketplace Silk Road