Luigi Mangione latest: Public ‘defence fund’ passes $50,000 as top New York attorney retained for legal case
Karen Friedman Agnifilo to represent suspect as he faces second-degree murder charge while donations pour into GiveSendGo fundraiser and GoFundMe reportedly takes down another
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Supporters of Luigi Mangione are donating tens of thousands of dollars for “defence funds” that have been established for him as the suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has retained a top New York attorney for his legal case.
Amid fears the shooting suspect is being turned into a martyr, several fundraisers have been set up for him online, with one created by anonymous group ‘The December 4th Legal Committee’ surpassing more than $90,000 in donations on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo by Saturday.
The group’s name is an apparent reference to the day the 26-year-old allegedly gunned down Mr Thompson in Midtown Manhattan.
Other campaigns soliciting donations for Mangione’s defence have been taken down by sites, such as GoFundMe, reported, abc.
It comes as Mangione retained high-powered lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo to represent him as he faces a second-degree murder charge, CNN reported.
Ms Agnifilo, who has worked in private practice since 2021, has extensive experience in New York City’s criminal justice system, having formerly spent seven years as the chief assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
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The very online ‘gray tribe’ philosophy of alleged UnitedHealthcare killer Luigi Mangione
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Health care companies increase security after ‘wanted’ posters for health care executives crop up
“Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid.
The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers.
In the week since the brazen shooting, health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily.
An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.”
Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could “inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
The very online ‘gray tribe’ philosophy of alleged UnitedHealthcare killer Luigi Mangione
The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson followed Richard Dawkins and RFK Jr, tweeted about neuroscience and Japanese birth rates, and shared posts about how to think more logically.
The 26-year-old was fascinated by AI and decision theory; pro-technology but anti-smartphones; secular and scientific in his outlook, but in favour of religion on Darwinian grounds.
What does it all mean? Luigi Mangione’s worldview might not be familiar to most Americans, and it’s certainly not a common one among politically-motivated killers. Nevertheless, his social media posts, and the users he engaged with, mark him out indelibly as a very specific type of online person – one that’s intimately familiar to me.
”Increasingly looks like we’ve got our first gray tribe shooter, and boy howdy is the media not ready for that,” wrote the journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans, who analyzed Mangione’s online life earlier this week.
There’s no single accepted name for this loose, extremely online subculture of bloggers, philosophers, shitposters and Silicon Valley coders. “The gray tribe” is one term; ”the rationalist movement” is another.
Io Dodds has the full story.
The very online ‘gray tribe’ philosophy of alleged UnitedHealth killer Luigi Mangione
The man accused of killing Brian Thompson had an extensive social media history that makes his worldview very clear, writes Io Dodds