Lawyers for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating a top US health insurance executive, are mounting a vigorous defence to have the death penalty removed from his case. They argue that the US Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is biased due to her previous employment at a lobbying firm that represented the victim's parent company.
Conflict of Interest Allegations at the Heart of the Defence
In court documents filed on Friday, 18 December 2025, Mangione's legal team asserted that Attorney General Bondi has a "profound conflict of interest". This stems from her work at Ballard Partners, a Washington DC lobbying firm founded by prominent Trump donor Brian Ballard. The firm lists UnitedHealth Group among its clients.
UnitedHealth Group is the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, whose CEO, Brian Thompson, was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel on 4 December 2024. Bondi joined Ballard Partners as a lobbyist in 2019 after serving as Florida's attorney general and left the firm upon her federal appointment earlier this year.
While it is not clear if Bondi personally worked on UnitedHealth Group's account, Mangione's lawyers are seeking court permission to investigate her ties to the firm. They want to examine her compensation and any instructions she may have given to Justice Department staff handling Mangione's prosecution.
A Political Prosecution?
The defence claims this alleged conflict, combined with public statements Bondi made when announcing the pursuit of the death penalty, shows the case is being driven by politics. At the time, Bondi said she was directing prosecutors to seek capital punishment to "carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again".
These remarks prompted the federal judge overseeing the case, Margaret Garnett, to caution the Justice Department against further public commentary that could prejudice potential jurors.
"Any criminal defendant, let alone one whom the government is trying to kill, is due a criminal process that is untainted by the financial interests of his prosecutors," Mangione's lawyers wrote in their filing.
Broader Legal Strategy and Upcoming Hearings
The motion to dismiss the death penalty is part of a multi-pronged defence strategy. Mangione's attorneys, the husband-and-wife team of Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Marc Agnifilo, are also seeking to have two federal charges thrown out and certain evidence excluded.
A hearing on these motions is scheduled for 9 January at the US court for the southern district of New York in Manhattan. This follows a separate, weeks-long pre-trial hearing for state charges, where the defence successfully had first and second-degree murder charges dismissed. A ruling on what evidence will be admissible in the state case is expected in May.
Federal prosecutors have pushed back against the defence's claims, arguing in November filings that "pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect". They characterised the defence's arguments as a repackaging that does not warrant dismissing the indictment or precluding congressionally authorised punishments.
Mangione, 27, was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a five-day manhunt. Law enforcement officials reported finding bullets and a notebook containing attacks on the insurance industry in his possession at the time of his arrest.
