Luigi Mangione planned the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson months in advance ... and, he'd clearly been thinking about it longer -- so say federal prosecutors.
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00:00Luigi Mangione is now in New York, where he will stand trial in state court for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
00:11He has also been charged federally with murder as well.
00:15The state case will go first, but there is something really significant in the federal charging documents
00:22that shows that this was not something that Luigi Mangione allegedly drummed up weeks ago.
00:30This is months and months and months in the making.
00:34Something that he had been thinking about and planning and it is all laid out in this federal complaint now
00:40where we see some of his journal entries are part of this complaint
00:46and they have put in the ones obviously that are most pertinent to the crimes he's charged with, stalking, murder, firearms offenses.
00:55I gotta tell you, the one that is most telling for me is August 15th, folks.
01:01In his notebook, he says the details are finally coming together
01:06and I'm glad in a way that I've procrastinated because it allowed me to learn more about the United Healthcare company.
01:15The notebook, now that is so critical because what they're saying is procrastinated.
01:20You don't procrastinate for a day.
01:22So this was mid-August.
01:24It seems like months before he was thinking about doing this.
01:28Right, and in that same entry, he goes on to say the target, quote, the target is insurance.
01:34It checks every box.
01:36So, I mean, I don't, that lays it out right there, him saying.
01:40Can I tell you what's really significant about that?
01:42The target is insurance.
01:44It sounds like he has a broader view of what's wrong with society, but he's targeting it on insurance.
01:51Health insurance checks every box of what is wrong in his eyes.
01:58But it's not, see, what we thought of up to this point was that this was specifically about health insurance now.
02:05But it seems like he's just got a broad view of what's wrong with society and insurance is the best example of it.
02:12Right.
02:13He's a man who's obviously operating under a real sort of a passion for and becoming impassioned with a desire to somehow affect the society and through the insurance industry.
02:27You know, the fact this lasted months leads me to believe this is a man who was sort of, you know, edging towards the inevitable in a violent act, which obviously, you know, is alleged to have happened here.
02:38But this is somebody, you know, he worked towards it for months, seemingly growing more and more agitated and maybe beyond his ability to control himself going forward.
02:48Yeah. Let me tell you something about this, because this is just ringing a bunch of bells for me.
02:52We're doing a documentary on Mangione that will air in a couple of weeks on Fox.
02:59During our research in this and interviewing people, we talked to people who were with him in June and July.
03:08Actually earlier than that also, April.
03:11But what I'm thinking is the people I'm thinking of specifically in June and July, they had no concept that this had been hatched at that point.
03:19They didn't know. But what was interesting, some of them have told us he was using the alias that was on the fake ID.
03:26So even at that point in the summer. Right. And now this now we're seeing the journal entries.
03:31It's making sense. It makes sense. Now, by the way, on October 22.
03:36So a month before he goes to New York, a month before he goes to New York and a month and a half before the murders, the murder, he makes it clear he had his target.
03:45Right. He says he has the intent to, quote, whack the CEO of one of the insurance companies.
03:52Well, he says at its investor conference, this investor confidence is a true windfall.
03:57And most important, the message becomes self-evident.
04:02Remember, he talked about bean counters in his manifesto.
04:06And this was a CEO UnitedHealthcare meeting with shareholders.
04:12Right. So he had made his decision that he was going to go in October.
04:17Yeah, that he was going to that conference that was held held at the Hilton.
04:21So and then they go on to describe the fact that he arrived in New York on November 24th and go through all of his the steps of his planning to be there that morning to open fire and kill Brian Thompson, according to the to the federal complaint.
04:39Now, Jason, if you're there, his lawyer, Karen Agnifilo, said before she started representing him that maybe the best defense is some sort of diminished capacity defense, which, you know, the code is it's not guilty by reason of insanity.
04:56I got to say, when you look at how methodical he was over a period of months and months and months, that seems like a hard nut to crack.
05:08Well, I don't know. I mean, that kind of methodology could, in fact, be evidence of insanity.
05:13I mean, depends. I'm sure that's the way the defense will play it out.
05:16This is a man who was so singularly focused, so monomaniacal that he had no choice in his mind but to commit these crimes.
05:24You know, the standard, of course, is do you know do you understand the difference between right and wrong?
05:29And I think they're going to play up these manifestos as somebody who who lost that understanding of right versus wrong.
05:37Now, I think obviously insanity defense is incredibly hard to pull off.
05:41It is very, very, very rare.
05:43And I don't want to overstate the likelihood of success, but I think he's got some things he can point to that might not necessarily, you know, may not win the day.
05:52But well, now that we know that it goes back months, it seems like one of the things they would have to do is show where there was some sort of breaking point.
06:00And we've been I think that's really hard to do.
06:02I have a period of months when you're so methodical that you don't even start with the insurance industry.
06:08You start with a broad view. See, a sociopath is not insane by definition that you can have a sociopath who doesn't meet the definition of insane.
06:19And, you know, that doesn't cut it.
06:22But if you've got somebody whose view of the world is warped or, you know, I've got to kill to make my point.
06:30And then he hones in and he's an intelligent guy.
06:34I think it's going to be a really, really hard argument.
06:37Yeah, if that's what they end up.
06:39I mean, I'm not sure what else they can do.
06:41I don't know what else they can do.
06:42Yeah, it's going to be.
06:43I mean, from what we know, it's going to be incredibly difficult to fight the facts of this thing.
06:46I mean, there's no real dispute that it was Luigi Mangione who was the trigger man and that obviously caused the death.
06:52And it was, you know, premeditation.
06:54I mean, good God, we have that all over the place.
06:57They've now also in New York charged him in a first degree murder.
07:00It's a very different standard than we're used to seeing on television or whatnot, where first degree is always the case of premeditation.
07:06In New York, you actually need something else beyond just premeditation for murder one.
07:10And that is in this case what they're alleging is.
07:13Terrorism.
07:14Terrorism, basically an act to intimidate a society, intimidate a group of people.
07:19So they've got to murder one.
07:20It's a life sentence if convicted.
07:22It's really, really hard for him to challenge on the any of the elements of the crime for which he's been charged.
07:28Hi, my name is Max and I'm from New York.
07:31Luigi's act of killing a CEO is unquestionably wrong, although the reasoning behind it is somewhat understandable because UnitedHealthcare is a scam.
07:40It's all a monopoly.
07:41And we're the sheep that keeps allowing these millionaires to take advantage of us.
07:45His actions deserve consequences.
07:47But this is now going to show other CEOs they need to change.
07:51I just want to address that point.
07:52I understand the passion with which that caller was speaking.
07:55I've listened to a lot.
07:56I've read a lot since the murder of of Brian Thompson.
08:00It's important to say that that is there's a lot that's out there in social media and elsewhere about how awful insurance companies are.
08:07And they certainly have their boxes.
08:08But most of what is thrown out there is totally untrue, totally untrue in terms of the theories and whatnot about how insurance companies react to patients and how they deal with them.
08:18And I really encourage people before taking these really, I think, dangerous views to go and educate themselves.
08:24As I have the last few weeks, it's really changed my approach to it.
08:27What I know about it, the tiny, tiny, tiny profit margins that insurance companies deal with.
08:33It's just really important to go and educate yourself before sort of saying this might be a lesson to others.
08:38It's really complicated.
08:39I want to raise one other thing that I think is a speaking of a dangerous problem.
08:43The shot of men going into that federal facility.
08:50Look at this shot.
08:51Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, is following behind the police and Mangione.
08:58I got to tell you something.
09:00What if they have a if they have a shot at something, their shot is going to be he can't get a fair trial.
09:05And when you've got the mayor, you have to understand that the mayor, the mayor was at every news conference with the mayor has to be there supporting.
09:13Hold on.
09:14Eric Adams, the way he has been mayor, is, of course, going to show up and be there with the police who this is.
09:22The police took this personally. Right.
09:24Because this guy committed a crime that was captured on a camera and then let him on this manhunt for a week.
09:30You understand their passion for making sure.
09:33I'm not saying there isn't a passion.
09:35I just want to give you an example and then we'll break.
09:37The example is this.
09:39I think it was 1970 when Charles Manson was being tried.
09:43There was a headline in the Los Angeles Times.
09:46Manson guilty.
09:48Nixon declares when Nixon was president.
09:51Right.
09:52They almost had a mistrial because the jury saw that.
09:55Right.
09:56When you have politicians who are basically making their point, it can create problems in the trial.
10:03So that's why I think I was shocked to see Eric Adams there.