Legal professionals representing Luigi Mangione, who’s accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, slammed President Donald Trump’s administration in courtroom filings this week, accusing it of violating his rights to a good trial in his dying penalty case by linking him to “left-wing” extremism.
“The Authorities has indelibly prejudiced Mr. Mangione by baselessly linking him to unrelated violent occasions, and left-wing extremist teams, regardless of there being no connection or affiliation,” Mangione’s legal professionals wrote in a Tuesday filing.
The legal professionals wrote that “a latest, tragic, high-profile homicide has solely elevated this prejudicial rhetoric,” an obvious reference to the deadly taking pictures of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley College.
TIMOTHY A.CLARY by way of Getty Pictures
Proper-wing pundits and officers have characterised the Kirk taking pictures, together with different latest acts of violence, as left-wing terrorism, prompting Trump to designate the antifa motion as a “terrorist group.” Antifa, which is brief for “anti-fascist,” is a decentralized motion and the phrase is usually used as an umbrella time period for loosely affiliated far-left-activists and teams towards fascist ideology.
Mangione’s legal professionals cited a number of situations by which they stated authorities officers linked his alleged motives to left-wing ideology.
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to Thompson’s killer as a “left-wing murderer” whereas talking to reporters throughout Monday’s press briefing.
She grouped Thompson’s killing with incidents of violence towards the precise, together with Trump’s tried assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, and assaults towards former particular authorities worker Elon Musk’s Tesla facilities.
Legal professionals additionally cited feedback made Tuesday by White Home deputy chief of workers Stephen Miller on Fox Information, the place he said, “after all the well being care CEO was brutally gunned down by one other self-described so-called anti-fascist that was then celebrated by different self-described anti-fascists, so after all, actually communist revolutionaries.”
“The makes an attempt to attach Mr. Mangione with these incidents and paint him as a ‘left wing’ violent extremist are false, prejudicial, and a part of a better political narrative that has no place in any legal case, particularly one the place the dying penalty is at stake,” the legal professionals argued Tuesday.
They declare that Mangione “actually doesn’t help these violent actions, doesn’t condone previous or future political violence, neither is he in any manner aligned with the group talked about within the White Home press release.”
The court ordered federal prosecutors on Wednesday to answer parts of the submitting by Oct. 3.
