• Luigi Mangione is under monitoring in a 9-by-7-foot federal solitary-confinement cell in Brooklyn.
• On Monday, he may be moved to the same protective unit as Diddy and SBF, who are in the same jail.
• A prison consultant called his conditions "miserable."

Luigi Mangione is being held in a 9-by-7-foot solitary-confinement cell at the federal jail in Brooklyn that also houses the rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and the cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, Business Insider has learned.

The trio could be living together in the same 15-man protective-custody unit as early as Monday, Sam Mangel, a prison consultant who has knowledge of Mangione's housing, said.

Federal prison records confirmed Friday morning that Mangione, Combs, and Bankman-Fried were at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.

Mangione is set to remain in solitary until at least Monday in one of MDC's small cinderblock Special Housing Unit cells — in a unit also known as "the SHU" and "the hole," Mangel said.

He'll eat meals in his cell, and inmates in his situation are typically allowed out for one hour of recreation or showering a day. Guards are supposed to check on him every 15 minutes.

"Miserable, just miserable," Mangel said when asked to describe conditions in federal solitary-confinement cells.

"SHUs are notoriously loud. You have people in there for psychiatric issues, for disciplinary reasons, and for withdrawal" from drugs, he said, adding: "So it is the loudest place in the jail — people are banging on their doors at all hours of the night."

Mangione is being held without bail on death-penalty-eligible federal charges in the December 4 ambush fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He has yet to be arraigned on New York charges of murder as an act of terror, which carries a top sentence of life without parole.

New, high-profile inmates are often monitored in solitary cells in the days before their units are assigned, said Mangel, who said he had been in communication with the defense team through Craig Rothfeld, a prison consultant.

Rothfeld, who was in the audience for Mangione's first federal court appearance on Thursday, declined to comment.

"It's a standard protocol," Mangel said. "This is especially true for a young man that, you know, might have some psychiatric concerns or his legal team or the BOP has concerns," he added, referring to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

"Even though it's called the 'SHU,' it's not for disciplinary reasons. It's strictly for administrative reasons," Mangel said.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment, saying: "For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual including their housing assignments."

Karen Friedman Agnifilo told BI that neither she nor Marc Agnifilo, her cocounsel, had spoken to Mandel. They did not immediately comment on Mangione's jail conditions.

The husband-and-wife team's Manhattan firm, Agnifilo Intrater, also represents Combs, who is being held without bail while awaiting a trial scheduled for May 5 on federal sex-trafficking charges.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

In representing Combs, the firm complained about conditions at MDC throughout three unsuccessful bail applications, arguing that there were frequent random lockdowns and that inmates were deprived of basic trial-preparation materials, such as folders and notebooks. Combs' attorney Marc Agnifilo called the conditions "horrific" in one court filing.

One former prosecutor described the federal jail as frequently too cold or too hot and crawling with cockroaches — basically, "hell on earth."

Mangione's solitary-confinement cell would be equipped with a metal bunk-style bed and a steel one-piece combination toilet and sink. If he's lucky, the cell has a small built-in writing desk.

"You're usually only allowed out for one hour a day, but it could be more restrictive due to staffing issues, where you're only allowed out three times a week to take a shower or walk in a small, enclosed area," Mangel said.

Mangione would also be allowed out of his cell for attorney calls and visits, Mangel said.

"The defendant is actually sitting in a cage during the call," he said. "It's like a fenced-in area that has a monitor, and it's behind plexiglass, and the defendant is able to talk and have an unmonitored legal call during that time, usually for one-hour blocks."

Defendants can find these calls canceled at the last minute "because there's lockdowns and staffing issues," Mangel said, adding: "You get everything arranged, and then we're on the call, waiting, and the defendant never shows up."

He said he expected Mangione would have better access to phones and visitors after he's moved to the jail's protective custody early next week.

Mangel said he had been a prison consultant for Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence for stealing $8 billion from customers of his FTX crypto exchange. Bankman-Fried has remained at MDC's protective custody unit since his arrest last year.

Mangione's next federal court date was set for January 18. As of Friday morning, a date had not been set for his Manhattan arraignment on state murder charges.

This story has been updated to include responses from the BOP and Mangione's attorney.

• Luigi Mangione is in New York to face both state and federal murder charges.
• His new federal indictment alleges he stalked and then killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
• Manhattan prosecutors say state charges will "proceed in parallel with any federal case."

Luigi Mangione appeared in federal court Thursday on new federal murder charges that could result in the death penalty or life in prison.

It was Mangione's first appearance in a Manhattan courtroom, this one crowded with press and federal staff, on charges in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He is expected to be arraigned on state murder charges in a courthouse one block away on Friday.

Mangione's voice was calm but firm as he answered the judge's questions.

"Mr. Mangione, do you understand what you have been accused of?" US Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker asked at one point before he entered his plea.

"Yes," he answered.

Edward Y. Kim, the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, has yet to say if he will seek the death penalty or a life sentence for the most serious charge in the four-count indictment — murder through the use of a firearm.

One former federal prosecutor called the death penalty a "remote" possibility, given Mangione's youth, and the chance that he may have suffered a mental breakdown in the six months before the shooting.

"In New York's federal courts, it's uncommon for them to seek the death penalty, and I think probably more uncommon for juries to want to authorize it, even assuming that Mr. Mangione killed Mr. Thompson in the way the government is alleging," said Michael Bachner, now in private practice.

The other three federal counts against Mangione allege he possessed and used an illegal firearm, and that he traveled interstate — between Georgia and New York, in order to stalk and kill Thompson.

Mangione presented an orderly, if tense, appearance in the chilly 26th-floor courtroom.

He was clean-shaven and his bushy eyebrows neatly groomed. Mangione sat with his shoulders raised and held stiff and wore khaki pants and a navy quarter-zip sweater over a white collared button-down shirt.

His ankles were shackled together with thick chains beneath the table where he sat. He wore bright orange slip-on sneakers without shoelaces.

To either side of Mangione sat his lawyers, husband-wife legal team Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Marc Agnifilo. Both are veteran criminal attorneys and former prosecutors. Their firm, Agnifilo Intrater, LLC, also represents Sean "Diddy" Combs in his federal sex-trafficking case, scheduled to be tried in the same Manhattan courthouse in May.

After Parker read the charges aloud to him, Mangione's posture relaxed. He repeatedly raised his left hand to pat down the hair at the back and side of his head.

He crossed his arms and wore a skeptical expression on his face with his tongue poking out between his lips while Friedman Agnifilo demanded clarity on how different law enforcement agencies coordinated and would present evidence in the case.

Mangione's next court date was set for January 18. His lawyers did not apply for bail, though Friedman Agnifilo said in court that she may do so on a future date.

Earlier Thursday, in a Pennsylvania courtroom, Mangione abandoned his extradition fight and was whisked to New York in an NYPD aviation plane and, upon landing at a Long Island airport, via police chopper to a lower Manhattan heliport.

His arrival in federal court was greeted by dozens of reporters and a smattering of fans holding messages of support written on cardboard.

"Health over Wealth," read one.

Mangione has yet to be arraigned on his first murder case, announced Tuesday by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

He faces up to life in prison on that state indictment, which alleges he murdered Thompson as an act of terror — a first-degree felony, the highest state charge and penalty available.

In a press statement after Mangione's federal appearance, Kim said he expects the state case — announced by Bragg just two days prior — would proceed to trial first.

In court Thursday, Friedman Agnifilo called the dual prosecutions "highly unusual" and said the charges between the Manhattan district attorney's office and the federal US attorney's office seemed to contradict each other.

The district attorney's indictment alleges Mangione killed Thompson in furtherance of "terrorism" that affects a "population of people," she said. But the federal charges accuse Mangione of stalking Thompson as an individual, she said.

Police and prosecutors say Mangione killed Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4.

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a five-day manhunt, on local gun and false ID charges. A Manhattan grand jury later indicted on charges related to the killing itself, and the New York cases will take priority over the lesser charges in Pennsylvania.

While in jail in Pennsylvania, Mangione received 54 email messages and 87 pieces of mail, Maria Bivens, of the state Department of Corrections, told BI.

There were also 163 deposits made into Mangione's commissary account, Bivens said. Bivens declined to say how much money was deposited in total.

These accounts can be used to buy toiletries or additional food items in the jail's store.

• Luigi Mangione's NY judge is Gregory Carro, described as tough on crime and sympathetic to victims.
• Lawyers call him no-nonsense, and some say he leans pro-prosecution.
• Carro has allowed video and still photography in his courtroom during past high-profile proceedings.

His cases have earned tabloid nicknames, including the "rape cops," a "killer nanny," and a "blowtorch hubby." In 2021, he presided over the moped hit-and-run death of Gone Girl actor Lisa Banes.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro has had dozens of sensational — sometimes horrific — cases in his 25 years on the Manhattan criminal bench.

As early as Thursday afternoon, Carro will preside over his most high-profile media case yet, the prosecution of Luigi Mangione, who is accused of the ambush shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

With Carro on the bench in a likely-packed 13th-floor courtroom, Mangione, 26, will be officially informed of the first-degree murder indictment against him. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Tuesday that the indictment alleges a top charge of murder as an act of terrorism.

After the charges are read, Mangione will have the chance to enter a plea of not guilty. Carro, who is expected to keep the case, will then set a next court date and order that Mangione be taken to a city jail to await that date.

A former Manhattan narcotics and homicide prosecutor, Carro was appointed to Manhattan's criminal court bench in 1998 by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Carro is the son of retired Associate Justice John Carro, who in 1979 was the first Puerto Rican appointed as an appellate judge in New York.

A 'tough draw'

The younger Carro is known among defense lawyers at Manhattan Criminal Court as a "tough draw. "

If one lawyer tells another in a courthouse hallway, "I just learned my guy is going to be in front of Carro," another might commiserate, "Wow, that's a tough draw," veteran attorneys in the city told BI.

Prosecutors might say the opposite of Carro: "Good draw."

"Of course, in a case like this, there are no good judges," said longtime Manhattan defense attorney Ron Kuby. "You're not going to find any members of Antifa on the bench."

Kuby called Carro "harsh but not crazy," as Manhattan criminal judges go.

Five Manhattan defense lawyers interviewed by Business Insider said the judge leans pro-prosecution. None would say so on the record, because they may have cases before him in the future.

The most common descriptor among lawyers reached by BI? "No nonsense."

"He's a tough judge," said a former fellow jurist, Charles Solomon, a state Supreme Court Justice in Manhattan who retired in 2017.

"Very firm, very fair, and well-respected by his colleagues," Solomon said of Carro.

Judges are assigned at random

Solomon said that Carro would have been assigned as Mangione's judge through a strictly random process.

What likely happened was that on December 4, the day of Thompson's shooting, Mangione's lead prosecutor, Joel Seidemann, happened to be on call to "catch" new homicides.

Seidemann's team of prosecutors feeds all of its new cases into one of only two assigned courtrooms, and one of them was Carro's.

"This is the typical way a case gets assigned," agreed another retired state Supreme Court justice, Michael Obus, who served as a supervising judge in Manhattan Criminal Court from 2009 to 2017.

"He's a solid guy," Obus said. "He's a very good trial judge. In general, lawyers could do a lot worse than Judge Carro."

Law, order, and victims

At sentencings, Carro is an emphatic advocate for law, order, and victims, his many news clippings show.

"I can only imagine what memories are haunting the victim in this case and his significant other," he said last year at a recent high-profile sentencing, for the random, attempted slashing murder of a French tourist.

In 2011, Carro presided over the trial of an NYPD officer accused of raping a young fashion executive — a woman he'd been dispatched to help when she was too intoxicated to get out of her taxi.

A jury cleared the officer of rape and convicted him of official misconduct for the three caught-on-video visits he made to the woman's apartment during his shift that night.

Police misconduct offenses "rip at that fabric that holds us all together," Carro told the former officer, Kenneth Moreno, before sentencing him to a year at Rikers Island jail.

"You, sir, ripped a gaping hole in that fabric in committing those crimes."

It was Carro's biggest media case until now.

Moreno's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, was one of the lawyers to call Carro "no nonsense."

"Not easy on defendants or defense lawyers, for that matter," Tacopina said.

"Honestly, it doesn't matter what judge has this case," the former criminal attorney for President-elect Donald Trump, added. "There is such overwhelming evidence of guilt here. It is not a 'Who done it.' It is a 'Was he sane when he did it' case."

In his most high-profile murder — dubbed the "killer nanny" case by city tabloids — Carro allowed a jury to hear the insanity defense of Yoselyn Ortega, who in 2012 fatally stabbed two young children in her care.

Defense lawyers called two psychiatrists to the stand to testify that Ortega heard voices — including Satan's — urging her to kill the children. Jurors also heard that when the mother returned home to witness the carnage in her Upper West Side bathroom, Ortega was nearby, slashing into her own throat with the murder weapon.

The jury rejected the defense.

Carro called Ortega "pure evil" at her 2018 sentencing.

Then he sentenced Ortega to life without parole for first-degree murder, the same maximum penalty Mangione faces for the same top charge in his indictment.

Last month, the New York Times reported Carro sentenced a Long Island, New York man who admitted planning to "shoot up a synagogue" to ten years prison on a plea to possessing a weapon as a crime of terrorism.

• Luigi Mangione is on track for a late Thursday murder arraignment in Manhattan, BI has learned.
• Barring a last-minute change of heart, he plans to waive extradition in PA earlier Thursday.
• His fate will be in the hands of Justice Gregory Carro, a veteran of the NY criminal bench.

Luigi Mangione is expected to be brought before a Manhattan judge on Thursday for arraignment on a first-degree murder charge that could keep him imprisoned for life, Business Insider has learned.

The 26-year-old suspect has agreed to formally waive extradition at a hearing Thursday morning in Blair County, Pennsylvania, a law enforcement source told BI, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to their connection to the case.

Barring any last-minute change of heart by Mangione — who has previously been fighting extradition — he would be immediately transferred to the custody of NYPD officers. The officers would then transport him to New York from Pennsylvania, where he has been held since his arrest 9 days ago in the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

"We have indications that the defendant may waive" extradition, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in announcing Mangione's indictment on Tuesday, without naming an arraignment date.

Once in Manhattan, Mangione would be brought directly to the Midtown North police precinct, home base for the Thompson murder investigation, said a second law enforcement source who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

After some preliminary processing, he will then be escorted out of the precinct.

"They want to do a perp walk for the media," in front of Midtown North, the second source said.

The precinct is in the same neighborhood where Thompson, a father of two sons from Minnesota, was ambushed outside a Hilton hotel, where he had been scheduled to speak at an investor meeting for the nation's largest healthcare insurer.

Police say Mangione is linked to the shooting by ballistic, DNA, and fingerprint evidence, in addition to writings recovered from him on his arrest.

Law enforcement is planning for an afternoon or early evening arraignment on Thursday, again barring any last-minute hitches that could push the timing into Friday.

Mangione's Pennsylvania hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro, a more than 20-year veteran of the Manhattan criminal bench, will preside over the arraignment and be Mangione's judge going forward, according to court and law-enforcement sources.

Carro's last high-profile case was the electric-scooter death of movie and television actor Lisa Banes, who appeared in "Cocktail," "Gone Girl," and "Masters of Sex."

Mangione's New York attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Bragg declined comment.

• Luigi Mangione has waived extradition in Pennsylvania, meaning he will come to New York voluntarily.
• Former Manhattan prosecutors say it's a good move for him to abandon his weeklong extradition fight.
• They said Mangione wouldn't benefit from a losing battle and needed to be close to his lawyer.

At a court hearing in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Luigi Mangione abandoned his fight against extradition and agreed to let New York police fly him to Manhattan.

Mangione will now face federal charges of stalking, murder through the use of a firearm, and a related gun charge, according to the federal complaint.

A representative for the federal court in Manhattan said a hearing was scheduled for 2 p.m. before US Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker.

Mangione is also expected to be arraigned on the state murder charges before Justice Gregory Carro of the New York Supreme Court — a tough judge described as pro-prosecution by some lawyers — at a later time.

Former Manhattan prosecutors told Business Insider his leaving Pennsylvania willingly — to face arraignment on first-degree-murder charges in the December 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — was a smart move.

Fighting extradition, a process that could take months, makes no sense in this case, they said, and could only hurt the 26-year-old former Ivy League student.

"I think Karen realizes fighting is a waste of time," Michael Bachner, a lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, told BI earlier this week, referring to Mangione's new defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.

Friedman Agnifilo, a former chief assistant attorney at the Manhattan district attorney's office, is married to Marc Agnifilo, the attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs in the rapper's federal sex-trafficking case. Their Manhattan law firm, Agnifilo Intrater, is set to defend in both high-profile cases.

"She's probably thought to herself, the evidence against my client is more than sufficient to lose an extradition hearing," Bachner said. "So what is the benefit of having one?"

Attorneys want to be near their clients, not shuttling back and forth — as an extradition battle drags on — between New York and central Pennsylvania, where Mangione is being held without bail.

"You don't want to be doing this from outside the jurisdiction," without easy access to your colleagues and law office, Jeremy Saland, a former prosecutor now in private practice, said.

Friedman Agnifilo did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her client's charges or extradition.

For some defendants, there are good reasons to fight being dragged across state lines to face charges, former prosecutors told BI.

"The benefit could be that you make them show their hand," Ikiesha Al-Shabazz, a defense attorney, said. At an extradition hearing, prosecutors are asked to demonstrate probable cause that the person being extradited committed the crime.

"You get to see some of the evidence," the former prosecutor said. "But this is the type of case where we pretty much know, from media reports, what the evidence will be."

New York Police Department officials say that evidence includes a 9 mm 3D printed "ghost gun" that matches the shooting ballistics and a spiral notebook of his writings. Both the gun and the notebook were recovered from his backpack when he was arrested last week at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald's following a five-day manhunt, police have said.

"What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention," the handwritten note from the spiral notebook says, law-enforcement officials told The New York Times.

Thompson was fatally shot on the sidewalk outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, where he was to speak at an investor meeting.

If Mangione had family in Pennsylvania, an extradition delay could have value, Al-Shabazz added — but that's not the case, either. Mangione's family is in Maryland, where they own a resort and country club.

"There's no humanitarian issue, either, where you don't want to be extradited to someplace where you won't get a fair trial," she said.

"These are the issues that you fight extradition over, but they're not prevalent in this case," she added. "So to fight extradition would only be to further delay the inevitable."

Fighting for the sake of fighting could work against his interests down the road, as Mangione seeks favorable treatment from his judge and prosecutors, Al-Shabazz said.

"You want to cooperate," Al-Shabazz, an adjunct law professor at St. John's University School of Law, said. "You don't want to make it harder for them to do their job for no reason if you're going to turn around and ask them for a plea deal, right?"

The allegations against Mangione are now playing out in three different courts.

In New York state court, if convicted of the top charge of first-degree murder, Mangione faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The top sentence under New York law would be life in prison without parole.

December 19, 2024: This story was updated to include information about Mangione's federal charges and extradition.

• Trump's lawyers allege there was juror "misconduct" at his NY hush-money trial.
• Details of the allegations, which Trump hopes will void his conviction, are not being released.
• Manhattan prosecutors called the allegations "unsworn, unsupported, heresay."

One day after Donald Trump lost his 11th-hour bid to void his hush-money conviction, a juror "misconduct" battle is brewing, according to a newly-public series of court filings in the case.

The heavily-veiled dispute began with a December 3 letter in which the president-elect's lawyers told the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, that "the jury in this case was not anywhere near fair and impartial."

Nearly two-thirds of the 15 page letter is redacted to protect juror confidentiality. In the unredacted sections, defense lawyer Todd Blanche — Trump's pick for deputy attorney general — complained to Merchan about "extensive and pervasive misconduct" that "violated President Trump's rights under the federal Constitution and New York law."

Details of the alleged misconduct, and even whether it concerns a single juror or more than one, are obscured by large black rectangles.

The letter demands that the supposed misconduct be considered by the judge as evidence in Trump's yet-resolved request that the historic conviction be voided in the interest of justice.

The defense followed up their December 3 letter to the judge with two more dated December 5 and 9. Both asked that the December 3 letter be made public in redacted form, a request opposed by prosecutors with New York Attorney General Alvin Bragg.

Prosecutors responded to the misconduct allegations on December 9, arguing that the claim "consists entirely of unsworn allegations," and is based on "hearsay and conjecture."

As part of Monday's 41-page denial of Trump's most recent dismissal effort — in which the judge rejected defense presidential immunity claims — Merchan told the parties he would only consider the new juror misconduct claims if they were formalized by the defense into a motion.

Merchan, like prosecutors, noted that the defense misconduct claim "consists entirely of unsworn allegations."

"Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated," he wrote, adding, "However, this court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture."

Merchan has not indicated when he might rule on Trump's interest-of-justice dismissal claim or broach the subject of sentencing. A lawyer for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.

• Luigi Mangione has been indicted in New York on a first-degree murder charge.
• Prosecutors say Mangione killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson "in furtherance of terrorism."
• Mangione's mother said killing Thompson was "something that she could see him doing," police said.

A Manhattan grand jury indicted Luigi Mangione on charges of first-degree murder, with prosecutors alleging he killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson "in furtherance of terrorism."

Prosecutors have also accused Mangione of second-degree murder, as well as a slew of counts related to the possession of an illegal "ghost gun" made from 3D-printed parts.

Following a five-day manhunt, Mangione was arrested last week at a restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on gun and false ID charges.

Police say he killed Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4.

"This killing was intended to invoke terror," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, calling it a"brazen, targeted and premeditated shooting."

Prosecutors offered a detailed look at Mangione's movements Tuesday. They say he stayed at an Upper West Side hostel for more than a week, using a fake New Jersey ID, before carrying out the killing.

According to prosecutors, two of the shell casings for the bullets that killed Thompson had the words "DENY" and "DEPOSE" written on them. The word "DELAY" was written on a bullet found at the scene.

An arrest warrant previously obtained by Business Insider indicated that Mangione would be charged with second-degree murder along with four other charges related to illegal weapon possession. The first-degree murder charge reflects a more severe charge.

If Mangione, 26, is convicted of the first-degree murder charge, he could spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. The charge, with the intent to commit terrorism, refers to a killing that is "intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population" or "influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion," according to the indictment.

Mangione has not yet entered a plea for any of the charges against him.

Even the minimum required sentence for first-degree murder, 25 to life, would mean Mangione would not see a parole officer until age 51.

The top charge could become a bargaining chip for Bragg, former Manhattan prosecutor Michael Bachner, who is now in private practice, told BI.

"Given the risk now of a maximum sentence of life without the possibility parole, that top terrorism count may induce the defendant to enter a plea, if one is offered," he said.

Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, lambasted the "ghoulish" online discourse valorizing Mangione for killing Thompson.

"Let me say this plainly — there is no heroism in what Luigi Mangione did," she said.

A Pennsylvania-based attorney for Mangione, an Ivy League graduate, has contested Mangione's extradition to Manhattan. At Tuesday's press conference, Bragg said he believed Mangione may change tack court proceedings Thursday and stop fighting extradition.

Over the weekend, Mangione hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo, an experienced New York-based criminal defense attorney who is married to and shares a law firm with Marc Agnifilo. Marc Agnifilo is representing Sean "Diddy" Combs in his criminal sex-trafficking case.

In an interview with CNN prior to taking on Mangione as a client, Friedman Agnifilio said the evidence was "overwhelming" that Mangione killed Thompson.

"It looks like to me there might be a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' defense that they're going to be thinking about because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did," she said.

Mangione left a robust online trail that went cold about six months before Thompson's killing. His mother filed a missing persons report in San Francisco in November, saying he had disappeared.

At Tuesday's press conference, Joe Kenny, the New York Police Department's chief of detectives, said the FBI contacted Mangione's mother on December 7, following a tip.

"She didn't indicate that it was her son in the photograph, but she said it might be something that she could see him doing," Kenny said.

Last fall, stars assembled in London at the over-the-top clubstaurant Lavo to celebrate one of their own. Janet Jackson smiled in a velvet booth with Idris Elba. The supermodel Naomi Campbell, the evening's host, posed in a black dress.

At the center of it all was Sean "Diddy" Combs in a leather jacket and Cartier sunglasses cutting into a bright red cake featuring artwork from his latest release. It was the mogul's 54th birthday party, as well as a celebration of his "The Love Album." As far as partygoers and paparazzi could tell, he was on top of the world.

Since his rise to fame in the late 1990s as a rapper and producer, Combs had built a business empire and become one of the richest and most well-connected entertainers of all time.

Behind the scenes that November, though, Combs' life was about to start crumbling. Negotiations were failing between Combs and the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, his ex who was on the brink of going public with details of their relationship.

Exactly one week after his star-studded party, the tensions bubbling under the surface boiled over when Ventura sued Combs. The lawsuit alleged a cycle of physical abuse, as well as rape by Combs, who Ventura also said forced her to have sex with sex workers.

Combs' lawyers alleged that her lawyers tried to extort $30 million in exchange for stopping a tell-all book about their 10-year relationship last year.

He eventually apologized to Ventura after CNN released surveillance footage of him physically abusing her at a hotel in 2016. He settled the lawsuit and, at the time, denied any wrongdoing — a stance he has maintained amid a flurry of subsequent allegations — but it marked the beginning of a year that turned his world upside down.

Over the next 12 months, Combs went from being one of the richest music moguls in history, known for his wide network in the entertainment industry and business savvy, to being behind bars, facing a criminal indictment, dozens of civil lawsuits, and an empire in decline.

Combs' freedom, reputation, and finances are all in jeopardy. If he's found guilty of criminal charges, it would mean one of the most celebrated entertainers is also a heinous criminal.

"He looked like he was the king of the world — as flossy as possible, blinged out, with the family, and everything's good," Kenny Hull, a reality show director who worked on the second iteration of "Making the Band," which featured Combs, told Business Insider about the last time he saw Combs, a few years ago at a park in Los Angeles.

"From the top to the absolute bottom," he added. "Canceled and done."

Combs has vehemently and consistently denied all accusations of sexual assault and sex trafficking since Ventura's lawsuit was filed, and each time a new allegation has been made against him.

"Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man, woman, adult or minor," lawyers for Combs told BI.

A birthday behind bars

Combs celebrated his 55th birthday not at a luxe international club but at the notorious Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where, a person previously told BI, he was sharing a dormitory with the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Instead of flowing Champagne or DeLeón, a jailhouse dinner was served on Combs' November birthday, consisting of Salisbury steak or black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, and green beans. There was no partying with A-listers, though he did receive a phone call from his kids.

Combs has been in jail pretrial since he was arrested in September, following a monthslong investigation that led to a grand jury indictment on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution for allegedly causing victims and paid sex workers to cross state lines.

The Bad Boy Records founder faces anywhere from 15 years to life in prison on a federal indictment alleging that for decades, he used violence, threats, and drugs to coerce women into sexual performances, including at elaborately planned, dayslong parties called "freak offs."

Combs has pleaded not guilty, insisting through his lawyers that the sex was consensual and that his accusers have financial motives to implicate him. His next court date is Wednesday.

And more criminal charges may be coming, as prosecutors have said grand jurors are weighing a new indictment that could include allegations of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors allege that Combs has used phone accounts belonging to other people held at the jail to contact family members and associates and enlist them to plant negative stories about his accusers and funnel payments to a witness.

They also say agents recovered three AR-15 rifles with defaced serial numbers when search warrants were executed in March at Combs' homes in Miami and Los Angeles and at a Florida airport. And in September, when Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt, a five-star hotel in midtown Manhattan, they recovered bags of pink powder that prosecutors said in September they believed contained ecstasy and other drugs. Prosecutors have not revealed the results of a drug test they said was conducted in September.

Since his arrest, Combs has made three unsuccessful attempts to be released on bail ahead of his criminal trial, which is scheduled for May 5.

"No condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community," including of witnesses and prospective jurors, US District Judge Arun Subramanian wrote in the most recent bail denial, issued the day before Thanksgiving.

An avalanche of lawsuits

Just two weeks after Combs was arrested and subsequently locked up at the Brooklyn jail, the Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee held a press conference to announce that his firm was representing 120 people accusing Combs of sexual misconduct.

"We are going to follow this evidence wherever it takes us. We will find the silent accomplices. We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors," Buzbee said of his legal offensive.

Since Ventura's bombshell November 2023 lawsuit, more than 30 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing Combs of sexual abuse, including about 20 from Buzbee's clients, all listed as John Doe or Jane Doe.

"It feels really good to know he's behind bars," Adria English, who is not a Buzbee client, told BI. She worked as a dancer at Combs' famous white parties and filed a lawsuit in July accusing him of sex trafficking. "What we're having to speak of already sounds like we're lying — it already sounds like a movie because it's so horrible," she said. "It's so disgusting."

Attorneys for Combs pointed BI to a statement previously released in response to English's lawsuit, saying in part: "No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won't change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted, or sex trafficked anyone."

The "I'll Be Missing You" rapper has been accused by both men and women of rape, sexual assault, and lacing drinks with drugs. Over half a dozen of the lawsuits allege the abuse of boys and girls between 10 and 17 years old. Four lawsuits allege that sexual attacks happened at Combs' famed A-list white parties throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and two of those four lawsuits allege teenagers were victimized.

Timeline of events

Earlier this month, a woman accused the rapper Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, of raping her with Combs when she was 13 years old at a party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. An unnamed plaintiff originally filed the lawsuit in October, identifying Carter only as "Celebrity A."

Carter, in a statement through the X account of his entertainment company, Roc Nation, denied the allegations, calling them "heinous" and accusing Buzbee, the plaintiff's lawyer, of trying to "blackmail" him.

Attorneys for Combs continue to call all the lawsuits brought by Buzbee publicity grabs.

"Mr. Buzbee's lawsuit against Jay-Z and Mr. Combs and the recent extortion lawsuit Jay-Z brought against Mr. Buzbee exposes Mr. Buzbee's barrage of lawsuits against Mr. Combs for what they are: shameless publicity stunts, designed to extract payments from celebrities who fear having lies spread about them, just as lies have been spread about Mr. Combs," attorneys for Combs told BI Thursday.

The accuser in the lawsuit filed against Combs and Carter said in a recent interview with NBC News that there were some inconsistencies in her story but that she stood by the allegations.

Combs' lawyers are challenging the claims in at least seven lawsuits, which are ongoing. He has not responded in court to the lawsuits brought by Buzbee, which were all filed after his arrest.

A Los Angeles entertainment attorney, Camron Dowlatshahi, who's not involved in the lawsuits against Combs, told BI that though the rapper is still considered wealthy, litigating each of these cases through trial and potentially being exposed to multimillion-dollar judgments "does not seem prudent."

"Each of the lawsuits piggy-back on the other, and witnesses will be plenty," Dowlatshahi, a partner at the law firm Mills Sadat Dowlat, said.

Dowlatshahi said that lawsuits typically settle before trial and that he anticipated the same in Combs' case.

"Diddy will have to be strategic, however, in which cases he settles first and for how much," Dowlatshahi said.

Down with Diddy's empire

As the allegations against Combs have piled up, so have his legal bills.

Combs was once estimated to be worth $820 million, according to Forbes. He'd created an assortment of lucrative revenue drivers that contributed to regular eight-figure annual paydays, including a deal with Diageo; his lifestyle brand, Sean John; a record label; and a music catalog.

One by one, those income streams have dried up.

When the civil lawsuits started, Combs was already engaged in a legal back-and-forth with Diageo, his most bankable partner.

Combs signed with the liquor giant in 2007, agreeing to be the face of Cîroc vodka in exchange for a cut of sales. The partnership became one of the most lucrative celebrity liquor deals in history, expanding further when Combs and Diageo launched DeLeón, a co-owned tequila line. Over 15 years, the company paid him nearly $1 billion, Forbes reported.

While Combs originally sued Diageo in May 2023, alleging the company did not support his ventures, the mounting sexual abuse lawsuits did him in, in the end.

"Mr. Combs is well-aware that these lawsuits make it impossible for him to continue to be the 'face' of anything," Diageo lawyers wrote in a letter to a judge in December 2023.

By January, the matter was resolved. Combs received $200 million for his stake in DeLeón tequila and not a penny for his longtime work with Cîroc.

It's a similar story for his other ventures.

Combs' lifestyle company, Sean John, had already slipped: In 2016, he sold a majority stake in the business, which at that point included fragrances and furnishings, to Global Brands Group for $70 million, Forbes reported. Just five years later, Global Brands Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and Combs bought back the business for $7.55 million, just over 10% of what it was once worth.

The clothing line's website has gone defunct, its Instagram scrapped, and it is no longer sold at Macy's, once the exclusive home of the brand's sportswear line — and one of its last remaining retailers. The department store, which was accused by one of Buzbee's clients of covering up a 2008 sexual attack by Combs, did not comment on whether the removal of his Sean John line had to do with the compounding lawsuits. Macy's didn't respond to the allegations of covering up a sexual assault in court or to a request for comment about them from BI.

The disintegration of Combs' entertainment businesses, though, was a direct reaction to his mounting legal problems.

Soon after Ventura filed her lawsuit, Combs stepped down as chair of Revolt, the cable network and media company he cofounded. By June, he'd given up his stake. A Hulu reality show that was supposed to follow Combs and his family was scrapped. Any chance of his being able to cash out and sell his music catalog is slim.

"There are so many lost opportunities," Clayton Durant, a professor who teaches music business at Long Island University's Roc Nation School, told BI in October. "There is no way a brand is touching Diddy — probably forever."

With no moneymaking on the table, Combs has taken to trying to sell the assets he does have.

Earlier this year, he listed his Los Angeles mansion in the tony Holmby Hills for $61.5 million. His private jet, LoveAir, is also listed for sale, and while he awaits a buyer, he's been renting it out.

It's not clear how much use he will have for it anyway, at least in the near future.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Combs lost his third application to be freed on $50 million bail.

Subramanian ordered that he remain held pending his May 5 trial, citing the rap mogul's history of violence and of contacting and threatening prospective witnesses.

"Diddy's been the ultimate puppet master for the last 30 years, and people wanted to say something … they've been too afraid," English, the dancer who accused Combs in a lawsuit of sex trafficking, told BI. "But now because of the raids, everybody's about to be exposed, regardless, so it's going to come out."

• A NY judge Monday denied Trump's demand that his hush-money case be dismissed on immunity grounds.
• Judge Juan Merchan said the SCOTUS immunity decision found a president is not above the law.
• Any use of official-act evidence in the case would be "harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt," he also wrote.

Donald Trump's 11th-hour bid to toss his hush-money case prior to Inauguration Day — on presidential immunity grounds — was rejected Monday by a Manhattan judge.

The decision now kicks the ball back to Trump. His lawyers have previously promised to quickly appeal, to the US Supreme Court if necessary, in hopes of voiding his sole criminal conviction.

An attorney for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Merchan's decision.

How the decision will impact Trump's sentencing — which has been delayed three times and currently remains without a scheduled date — remains unclear. Prosecutors have urged that the conviction stand, even if that means Trump is sentenced after his second term.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan made no mention of sentencing in Monday's strongly worded, 42-page rebuff, which was centered on presidential immunity.

Presidential immunity does not apply to the hush-money case because the case hinged on "decidedly personal acts," Merchan found, agreeing with arguments by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

"The Trump Court was careful to acknowledge that 'The President, charged with enforcing federal criminal laws, is not above them,'" Merchan wrote, quoting from the landmark June SCOTUS decision granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution.

Lawyers for Trump have repeatedly challenged the case on presidential immunity grounds, without success, since his April 2023 indictment on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

The indictment alleged that Trump conspired throughout 2017, his first year in office, to alter 34 checks, invoices, and vouchers in order to retroactively hide a $130,000 hush-money payment that silenced porn actress Stormy Daniels less than two weeks before the 2016 election. A jury found him guilty on all counts in May.

"This case involves important federal questions," Trump's lawyers argued just one month after his indictment, because the charges related to conduct "committed while he was President of the United States" and acting within "the color of his office."

Last month, his lawyers argued that his new status as president-elect has strengthened their argument for dismissal. The orderly transition of power is at stake, they said in their most recent dismissal motion. They also argued that presidential immunity, as bestowed by SCOTUS in June, extends to presidents-elect.

But Merchan wrote Monday that even in granting presidents broad immunity from prosecution, SCOTUS set some limits.

He rejected Trump's argument that the hush-money indictment and conviction should be tossed because Manhattan prosecutors, in their presentations to both grand jurors and trial jurors, used the kind of official-act evidence now retroactively barred by SCOTUS.

That evidence included trial testimony by Trump's former White House communications director, Hope Hicks, who described to jurors a conversation she had with Trump in the Oval Office in 2018. Trump had told Hicks that he was relieved that news of the hush-money payment only leaked after the election.

Some of Trump's 2018 tweets about the hush-money scandal were also "official," his lawyers had argued.

But the judge found that no official-act evidence entered the case. And even if it had, he wrote, "such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt."

Also Monday, Merchan left undecided a series of letters between the defense and prosecutors, not yet made public, that he said address defense claims of "juror misconduct."

Prosecutors want these communications sealed in their entirety, and the defense wants them released to the public in redacted form, Merchant wrote.

The judge said he is continuing to review the defense allegations and a related bid by Trump's lawyers to have the case dismissed in the interest of justice.

• Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has tapped Joel Seidemann to lead the Luigi Mangione prosecution.
• His 40-year career includes prosecuting the Etan Patz murder and Brooke Astor swindle cases.
• Colleagues say he's tenacious and detail-obsessed, with an expertise in fighting psych defenses.

Former colleagues say he's detail-obsessed and relentless. One calls him "a firecracker." And they're hard-pressed to name anyone in the district attorney's office more capable of crushing a psych defense in a murder case.

Joel Seidemann is the veteran assistant district attorney who will be helming the Manhattan prosecution of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, charged in last week's ambush shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Seidemann has been prosecuting high-stakes, high-profile crimes, including homicides, for 42 years.

"I think a great deal of Joel," said Cyrus Vance, Manhattan District Attorney during Seidemann's two biggest trial wins, in the Etan Patz murder and Brook Astor swindle cases.

"He's probably tried more cases than anybody in the DA's office," said attorney Daniel Bibb, hired as a prosecutor six months after Seidemann and now in private practice.

"It's a sign, certainly, that the Manhattan DA's office is giving this their very highest priority," said veteran defense lawyer Ron Kuby.

An author and former adjunct law professor at Pace University, Seidemann does not wilt under the national spotlight that has found him and his cases over the decades.

In addressing judges and juries, he readily turns the dry language of police and medical reports into vivid sound bites.

"They didn't call for an ambulance. They didn't call for help. Rather, they stood on the street corner and laughed," he told a judge of the teen suspects in the fatal 2006 mugging of an NYU student.

"She had her hair done while her husband lay in surgery," he told another judge in 2008, arguing against bail for Barbara Kogan, dubbed the Black Widow for her pricey dark attire. (Kogan soon after pleaded guilty to her husband's 1990 contract killing.)

More than one former colleague said with affection that Seidemann lands his best lines with seeming self-awareness, sometimes peeking over his shoulder to check the courtroom audience's reaction.

Meanwhile, defense lawyers described him as a relentless adversary.

One of the few high-profile trials Seidemann has lost was the 2007 acquittal of David Lemus in a fatal 1990 shooting at the Palladium nightclub. The case was featured in a recent NBC documentary, The Sing Sing Chronicles.

Both of Lemus's lawyers called Seidemann tough but fair.

"Joel tried the best case he could, but David Lemus was innocent," attorney Jonathan P. Bach told Business Insider.

"He was a consummate professional, extraordinarily talented," agreed co-counsel Daniel J. Horwitz. "But we had the two actual killers taking the stand, and confessing to pulling the trigger."

A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA's office declined to comment on this story. Mangione's attorney in Pennsylvania, where he is fighting extradition, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Neither did his New York attorney, Karen Agnifilo.

Mangione has been denied bail and remains held in a central Pennsylvania jail as he awaits a yet-scheduled extradition hearing.

The Etan Patz case

"Joel is fabulous — he's as experienced in that office as they go, and I don't have a bad thing to say about him," said former prosecutor Joan Illuzzi, also now in private practice.

In 2017, Seidemann and Illuzzi won a kidnapping and murder conviction in a case that held national attention for decades, 1979 disappearance of six-year-old Etan Patz.

"He's especially skilled at psych cases," said Illuzzi, noting that the Patz conviction required jurors to believe former bodega worker Pedro Hernandez had confessed to killing Patz because he was guilty, not because he was mentally unsound.

The Mangione case, should it go to trial, may also hinge on a psych defense. Longtime Manhattan attorneys told BI this week that his best hope may be going to trial on what's called an extreme emotional disturbance defense.

The Brooke Astor swindle

In 2009, Seidemann tried what may be his most high-profile case until now — the $60 million swindling of wealthy philanthropist Brooke Astor by her own son — and he called former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the witness stand.

The case hinged on Astor's competency to sign repeated changes to her will. Under Seidemann's questioning, Kissinger recalled to jurors how Astor, on the brink of turning 100 years old, had been so impacted by Alzheimer's that she could no longer recognize her dear friend Kofi Annan.

The then-UN Secretary General was sitting beside Astor at a 2002 dinner party at her Park Avenue co-op.

"Who is the black fellow who is sitting on the other side of me?" Kissinger recounted Astor turning to him and asking.

Seventy prosecution witnesses testified at the seven-month trial, including journalist and editor Graydon Carter, socialite Annette de la Renta, and author Louis Auchincloss. Barbara Walters teared up on the stand as she recalled Brooke's mental decline.

"He's brilliant," said former Manhattan elder-abuse prosecutor Elizabeth Lowey, who teamed up with him to win the case. "He's a firecracker."

Seidemann synthesized stacks of financial documents and scores of witness accounts, remembered Lowey, now at the fraud prevention company EverSafe.

Then he'd pluck out the richest details to create a persuasive narrative for the jury, she said.

Among those details: the son, Anthony Marshall, sailed a teak-decked yacht. Meanwhile, he was ignoring requests by his mother's nurses for no-skid socks and a stairway safety gate.

"The yacht for $920,000? He wasn't too frugal for that," Seidemann told jurors at closing arguments. "But the safety gate for two grand? Not going to happen."

Astor's nurses called Marshall's wife, Charlene, "Miss Piggy" behind her back, Lowey remembered, and Seidemann made a point of letting jurors hear that.

"I would tell Joel we can't call her Miss Piggy, even if it's in the nurses' notes, and he would say, 'Oh yes we can," Lowey said, laughing.

"He's not afraid to call it what it is," she added. "If there's anyone who can make people understand that even if you have issues with the insurance industry, you can't be a vigilante, it's Joel."

Philip C. Marshall filed the 2006 guardianship petition that led to his father's prosecution. He told Business Insider that Seidemann kept a box of Kleenex on hand for him during interviews and trial prep.

"I just remember his ability to engage and listen — his calm and intentional nature throughout this ordeal," said Marshall, founder of the Beyond Brooke campaign against elder abuse.

More than one person interviewed by Business Insider mentioned Seidemann's height, one saying, "he still has a damn good courtroom presence." Marshall noted he is not a tall man.

"But any opponent will be dwarfed by the stack of documents and evidence that he'll bring to this case," Marshall quipped.

• Luigi Mangione remains held in Pennsylvania and charged with the murder of Brian Thompson.
• Former Manhattan prosecutors predict the extradition process could take months.
• Once in New York, he'll stay in the city's most notorious jail and could pursue a psych defense.

Since his arrest on Monday in the Manhattan killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione has been held in Pennsylvania's oldest jail.

The State Correctional Institution at Huntington, a sprawling red brick structure on the edge of the Allegheny Mountains, opened in 1889 as a reformatory for delinquent boys, and still features its original Queen Anne-style architecture.

Mangione will remain at that maximum-security jail as he fights extradition — a process that Manhattan defense lawyers and former prosecutors predict will take months.

"Whatever it is, it's going to be better than Rikers, and he'll be in no hurry to leave," veteran New York defense lawyer Ron Kuby told Business Insider, referencing Mangione's likely next placement, the city's notorious Rikers Island. Two weeks ago, a federal judge complained that court-ordered safety and use-of-force reforms at Rikers have proceeded at a "glacial pace."

Here's what longtime Manhattan attorneys predict will happen behind the scenes as Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland real estate family, waits for his case to proceed from indictment to extradition and beyond.

First, a grand jury

Mangione is being held without bail on two felony complaints.

The first was drafted by police and prosecutors in Pennsylvania's Blair County. It alleges that on Monday, after being recognized by an employee at an Altoona McDonalds, he gave cops a fake ID and possessed in his backpack an unlicensed firearm — a part-metal, part 3-D-printed weapon described as a possible "ghost" gun.

The second complaint, drafted soon afterward by the NYPD and Manhattan prosecutors, also charges him with possession of a false ID and weapons possession but adds the top charge of second-degree murder.

Longtime Manhattan attorneys say a secret grand jury is likely already hearing evidence in Lower Manhattan on those charges.

Manhattan prosecutors will likely conclude their grand jury presentation against Mangione by the end of the week or by early next week at the latest, they said, estimating based on their own previous murder cases.

"They won't have full DNA and ballistic results yet," said one longtime defense attorney. The attorney asked to speak anonymously because they said they are under consideration to represent Mangione at his New York arraignment and in future proceedings.

At this early stage, prosecutors may not know for sure if the bullets fired at Thompson match the gun possessed by Mangione when he was arrested, the attorney said.

"But so far, they appear to have a ton of at least circumstantial evidence," they said. "But prosecutors only need to present a minimal amount of evidence" at this stage, to show that there is reasonable cause to believe Mangione committed the murder, they added.

Any indictment would remain sealed until Mangione faces a judge at his Manhattan arraignment.

A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to confirm if a grand jury is hearing evidence or to comment on this story.

Next, an extradition battle

Meanwhile, Mangione is fighting extradition to New York, a process that will spool out over the course of many weeks, the legal experts predict.

On Tuesday, a Blair County judge got the ball rolling.

He gave local prosecutors 30 days to obtain what's called a governor's warrant, in which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul would request Mangione's return to New York.

"Once the indictment is voted, which could be very soon, they'll ship that paperwork up to the governor's office, where I"m sure it will be expeditiously processed and sent to Pennsylvania," said Daniel Bibb, a former Manhattan homicide prosecutor now in private practice.

"There has to be an indictment for there to be an extradition," Bibb said.

Hours after Mangione's arrest, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Monday that the Commonwealth will cooperate in Mangione's extradition, and Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks told reporters that he recognized New York's murder case takes precedence over his own forgery and gun-possession case.

Mangione's Pennsylvania attorney, Thomas Dickey, told Good Morning America on Wednesday that he will demand an extradition hearing so that Manhattan prosecutors will be required to begin divulging their evidence.

Dickey has repeatedly maintained his client's innocence in statements to reporters this week. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.

A formal extradition hearing, which has not yet been scheduled, will not focus on whether Mangione committed the murder, Bibb said.

"The issue in Pennsylvania will be whether the person named in the New York indictment is him. And that's pretty much the only inquiry," he said.

"I pretty much guarantee that you'll be seeing Mr. Mangione in New York within the next couple of months," Bibb predicted, depending on how much delay the Blair County judge is willing to tolerate.

An extradition battle could take months

Kuby, who has practiced criminal law in New York for more than 40 years, said that a creative defense lawyer could use appeals to drag an extradition battle on for many months.

"You hold the extradition hearing. You lose? You appeal to Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate court," he said. "You lose that, and you apply to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to hear the case."

In the early 1990s, Kuby and his partner, William Kunstler, were able to delay the New York-to-Florida extradition of Frank Strahan — a Harlem man arrested in the cold-case, 1946 shooting death of Miami's first black police officer — for nearly two years.

A defense lawyer can try to appeal an extradition all the way up to the US Supreme Court, Kuby said.

A potential psych defense

Once brought back to New York, Mangione would be quickly arraigned. The ensuing prosecution, however, could extend years if he decides to use a psychiatric defense and fights the charges at trial, experts said.

Given what investigators have described as the evidence implicating him in the shooting — including extensive surveillance video footage and what the NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch described as "anti-corporatist sentiment" in a hand-written document recovered at his arrest — Mangione's best chances at trial may be what's called an extreme emotional disturbance defense, they said.

Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two sons from Minnesota, was fatally shot on the sidewalk outside a UnitedHealthcare shareholders meeting, where he'd been set to speak.

In his online posts, Mangione, the scion of a wealthy and prominent Baltimore family, had complained about his chronic back pain and the healthcare system.

A so-called EED defense would ask jurors to find Mangione guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter, arguing he was so emotionally disturbed at the time that he believed he had to kill Thompson.

"It might be a long shot," said the attorney who requested anonymity due to their potential connection to the case.

"But by all accounts, he went off the grid six months ago, and that was uncharacteristic of him, as was any act of violence," they said.

"He may well have had a psychotic break."

• Trump is making an 11th-hour bid to toss his hush-money case before Inauguration Day.
• Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has now filed an 82-page motion opposing Trump's dismissal efforts.
• Trump's "history of malicious conduct" is too serious to toss the case, Bragg wrote.

In an 82-page court filing made public Tuesday, Manhattan prosecutors say Donald Trump's "history of malicious conduct" is too serious for his hush-money case to be dismissed.

The filing, signed by DA Alvin Bragg, also fights Trump's claim that he enjoys something called presidential-elect immunity — above and beyond the presidential immunity bestowed on him by the US Supreme Court in June.

"There are no grounds for such relief now, prior to inauguration," Bragg wrote in opposing Trump's 11th-hour motion to dismiss, "because President-elect immunity does not exist."

With just six weeks left before his January 20 inauguration — and six months after a Manhattan jury convicted him — Trump is again demanding that New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan immediately dismiss his hush-money case.

It's his third time trying to void his indictment or his conviction. If successful, Trump would escape altogether his already thrice-delayed sentencing.

The president elect faces as little as no jail time and a potential maximum of four years prison for falsifying 34 business records throughout his first year of office to retroactively hide a hush-money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels. (Legal experts have said that it's unlikely Trump would be sentenced to jail time as a 78-year-old first-time offender convicted of low-level felonies, and any jail sentence would be stayed as he appeals.)

Trump paid for Daniels' silence just eleven days before 2016 election, and jurors unanimously found that he thereby conspired to promote his own election by unlawful means, Bragg wrote.

The evidence presented against Trump was "overwhelming," reads the filing, which is also signed by a lead prosecutor on the case, Christopher Conroy.

"The crimes that the jury convicted defendant of committing are serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York's financial marketplace," which relies on honest record-keeping, Bragg wrote.

Trump's conduct during his hush-money prosecution also weighs heavily against dismissal, as does his "long history of threatening, abusing, and attacking participants in other legal proceedings in which he is involved," Bragg wrote.

Trump's "contemptuous" conduct began even before his hush-money indictment was voted, the prosecutor wrote.

"He threatened 'death and destruction' if he was indicted and posted a photo of himself wielding a baseball bat at the back of the District Attorney's head," Bragg wrote of Trump's actions while the grand jury was still hearing evidence in early 2023.

Later, Trump launched online attacks on Merchan and members of his family.

Trump was found guilty of criminal contempt ten times for his "extrajudicial speech" — including social media attacks on witnesses — during his trial this spring, Bragg wrote.

Trump also repeatedly attacked the law clerk and was accused of lying under oath by the judge during last year's civil fraud trial, in which he's been ordered to pay a $454 million judgment.

That judgment remains on hold pending appeal.

Trump's history of abusing the legal process extends to his other cases, Bragg wrote, including his continued defamations of writer E. Jean Carroll, who last year won more than $80 million in damages after the president-elect repeatedly mocked her and called her a liar.

Bragg's filling asked Merchan to either sentence Trump before the inauguration, or put the case on hold until after he serves out his second term.

• Police said they found a "ghost gun" on the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect.
• Ghost guns are untraceable firearms that can be assembled at home, raising safety concerns.
• Elected officials are cracking down on the sale of such weapons to curb their accessibility.

Police say a weapon they found on UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione could be a 3D printed ghost gun.

Ghost guns are firearms assembled at home using parts that were purchased individually. Sometimes, those components are made using a 3D printer. It's legal to buy the parts and use them to make your own gun, but laws prohibit the sale or transfer of ghost guns to another person.

Mangione "was in possession of a ghost gun that had the capability of firing a 9mm round," Joe Kenny, the New York Police Department's chief of detectives, told reporters on Monday.

He added that it "may have been made on a 3D printer"; there's no confirmation that it was the same gun used to kill Brian Thompson.

Mangione is being held without bail, and a lawyer for him has not yet been publicly identified.

Both authorities and gun safety groups have raised concerns about ghost guns, which are accessible online in kits. More than 25,000 privately made firearms were recovered by US law enforcement agencies in 2022, according to the DOJ.

In 2022, New York City officials filed a lawsuit against five ghost gun retailers over their sales to residents. Mayor Eric Adams eventually came to an agreement with at least four of the companies that would stop the sale of ghost guns in NYC.

It's unclear if the firearm Pennsylvania police say they recovered from Mangione is technically a ghost gun, said Kris Brown, the president of the gun safety group Brady.

They'll know for sure once investigators examine the weapon to see if any of its component parts have serial numbers. Only if there are no serial numbers is it a ghost gun, meaning entirely unregulated and untraceable, Brown told Business Insider.

Mangione may have printed the plastic portions of his gun, but he likely purchased the metal components, she said. Under current law, if you buy these components as part of a kit, you need a background check, Brown said.

These include the slide, the thread for the barrel, and the trigger mechanism; all are easily acquired through mail-order companies that advertise online.

Currently, some states require serial numbers for separately sold metal components, and some do not, Brown said.

Brady advocates for gun-control legislation, including the 2022 rule issued by the Biden-Harris administration regulating the sale of ghost gun kits."That bill has been very effective," she said. "Without it, it would have been lawful for a shooter to buy a kit and assemble an entire gun in minutes." In 2023, there was a drop in ghost gun recoveries by police nationwide, Mark Collins, Brady's director of federal policy, said.

Brady is pushing next for passage of the Ghost Guns and Untraceable Firearms Act, which would set a federal standard requiring background checks and the serialization of build-it-yourself gun parts.

• Attorneys for Mike Jeffries asked a judge to rule on whether he is mentally fit for trial.
• Federal prosecutors would likely challenge the move, adding months to pretrial proceedings.
• The former Abercrombie CEO is accused of running an international sex-trafficking business.

The former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch is seeking to delay his federal sex-trafficking case on mental competency grounds.

Attorneys for the brand's former top executive, Mike Jeffries, asked a Manhattan judge on Monday to schedule a hearing to determine whether Jeffries is competent to stand trial, a spokesperson for the US attorney's office of the Eastern District of New York told Business Insider in a statement. Federal prosecutors are expected to challenge the move, which could add months to pretrial proceedings.

The defense would have until December 24 to file papers telling US District Judge Nusrat Choudhury how much of their competency motion can be sealed. The rest of the competency battle will play out throughout the first months of 2025.

The spokesperson said the defense has until February 6 to file a doctor's report supporting the competency motion, and the prosecution has until April 8 to file their own doctor's report. The competency hearing itself has yet to be scheduled, the spokesperson said. Jeffries is due back in court on March 13, 2025.

"We filed a motion to Determine Mr. Jeffries' Competency to Stand Trial, which will be dealt with in Court as, and when, appropriate — according to the Judge," Brian Bieber, an attorney for Jeffries, told BI in a statement. A competency hearing is meant to determine whether a defendant is able to understand the charges against them and the role of the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney.

On October 22, Jeffries, his partner, and a third man were arrested in Florida on federal sex-trafficking charges. Prosecutors allege they ran an international sex-trafficking and prostitution business. The men used Jeffries' position at the company to coerce dozens of men, many of whom wanted to become Abercrombie models, to partake in "sex events" in America and abroad, prosecutors say. Jeffries and Matthew Smith, his partner, have been accused of paying for men to travel to their New York homes and international hotels, where they performed sex acts.

Jeffries, 80, served as Abercrombie's CEO from 1992 to 2014. The indictment alleges that the sex-trafficking spanned from about 2008 to 2015, though Breon Peace, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said his office believes "dozens and dozens of men" were victims between 1992 and 2015.

During his time at Abercrombie, Jeffries steered the brand toward a more sexualized image, complete with shirtless models greeting shoppers. He was first hired by Les Wexner, a Jeffrey Epstein associate. At the peak of his career, Jeffries earned an annual eight-figure salary. His retirement package was reportedly around $25 million and he earned yearly payments of $1 million that ended last year.

• Jay-Z has filed his first response to a lawsuit alleging he and Sean "Diddy" Combs raped a 13-year-old.
• He said he wanted to force the woman to proceed under her real name instead of Jane Doe.
• A lawyer for the woman said she fears retribution and harassment if she is named.

Rapper Jay-Z is fighting to quickly unmask the Jane Doe accuser who has sued him and Sean "Diddy" Combs over allegations that she was sexually attacked after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards when she was 13 years old.

The accuser, who lives in Alabama, alleges in her lawsuit that she was given a drugged drink at a party "at a large white house" somewhere in New York, and was then raped by both rap A-listers as a third, unnamed female celebrity watched.

In papers filed Monday, a lawyer for Jay-Z — given name Shawn Carter — complained that the accuser should not be allowed to tarnish his name while hiding her identity.

In a 29-page filing in federal court in Manhattan, Carter says that the woman had previously sought money from him and that he had refused to pay.

The filing is Carter's first formal response to the new accusations, and follows his strongly-worded denial from Sunday on his company Roc Nation's X account.

Carter's attorney, Alex Spiro, said in Monday's filing that the lawsuit is a good thing.

"Now, at last, the false, unfounded allegations that underlie this campaign of extortion are having judicial light shined on them," Spiro wrote. "Except that this Plaintiff is bringing them as a Doe, who would continue to hide under cover of darkness."

When the Jane Doe first filed her lawsuit, in October, she had named only Combs, his companies and his associates as defendants. On Sunday she filed an updated lawsuit that removed a reference to "Celebrity A" and added "Shawn Carter" as defendant.

"Another celebrity stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor," the updated lawsuit reads, continuing to protect the identity of that third person.

The woman's lawyer, Tony Buzbee, confirmed to Business Insider on Sunday there had been previous contact between the Jane Doe and Carter. Buzbee said he had sent a letter to Carter requesting mediation before naming him in Sunday's updated lawsuit.

Carter responded to that outreach with a campaign of "harassment, bullying, and intimidation against Plaintiff's lawyers, their families, employees, and former associates in an attempt to silence Plaintiff from naming Jay-Z herein," the updated lawsuit alleges.

In fighting to keep his client's Jane Doe status as the lawsuit proceeds, Buzbee told a federal judge on Sunday that anonymity is necessary to protect all of his clients who are accusing Combs of sexual assault.

"My firm currently represents over 200 clients with claims against Mr. Combs," Buzbee wrote in a filing on Sunday.

More than 80 percent of these clients have said Combs threatened them or their family members in hopes of keeping them quiet, Buzbee wrote.

"For many of the clients referenced above, Mr. Combs' threats of violence were a primary reason why they did not speak out or file lawsuits earlier. Most of our clients still fear retribution and have conditioned moving forward on anonymity," he wrote.

Since mid-October, Buzbee has filed some 20 lawsuits in which men and women allege they were sexually assaulted by Combs.

Buzbee told Business Insider that he had anticipated Carter's move to unmask his client and said that he would be filing a response "in due course."

He also said that he believes Carter is the celebrity John Doe who sued him in November. "He sued me under a pseudonym but files a motion to reveal the victim," Buzbee said.

BI could not confirm that Jay-Z is the one suing Buzbee. The John Doe plaintiff's identity has not been revealed in court filings and would not have been disclosed in the documents Buzbee was served.

Spiro did not immediately respond to requests by phone and email for comment on this story.

In a separate filing on Monday, Spiro also asked US District Court Judge Analisa Torres to schedule a hearing "on an expedited basis" at which both sides would make their case for why the plaintiff should or should not remain anonymous.

"For the avoidance of doubt, Mr. Carter is entirely innocent," he wrote. "This is a shakedown."

He added, "Allowing Plaintiff to proceed anonymously would deny Mr. Carter the fundamental right to confront his accuser, while simultaneously enabling Plaintiff and her counsel to conduct a trial by media."

Combs remains held in a federal jail in Brooklyn on his September federal sex-trafficking indictment. Combs has pleaded not guilty and has promised to fight that indictment at a trial scheduled for May 5.

• UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot outside a Manhattan hotel on December 4.
• Police arrested Luigi Mangione, who now faces a murder charge for the killing.
• Mangione has hired prominent New York lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo to defend him.

Luigi Mangione, the man police say murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has hired high-profile attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo.

Friedman Agnifilo is married to Marc Agnifilo, lead lawyer defending Sean "Diddy" Combs against federal sex-trafficking charges.

The Combs and Mangione cases will be handled by the same Manhattan law firm, Agnifilo Intrater LLP, and can be expected to dominate legal news headlines in the coming year.

In getting retained, Friedman Agnifilo bested some half-dozen other prominent attorneys who had been interviewed by the Mangione family last week, according to multiple sources who asked not to be named due to their connection with the case.

Friedman Agnifilo last week left her previous law firm, Perry Law, to join her husband's firm as counsel, representatives for both firms told Business Insider.

Friedman Agnifilo had been a CNN commentator as recently as Wednesday, when she suggested that an insanity defense would be Mangione's best bet.

She told journalist Kaitlan Collins, "It looks like to me there might be a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' defense that they're going to be thinking about because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did."

On Friday night, Collins broke the news that Friedman Agnifilo had been hired by the Mangione family.

Friedman Agnifilo worked as the chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for seven years before pivoting to private practice in 2021.

Mangione faces a second-degree murder charge in New York for the fatal December 4 shooting of Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota. That charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

(A charge of first-degree murder is reserved for those accused of killing a law enforcement official or witness of a crime, or for when a murder is committed during the commission of another high-level crime, including robbery, rape, or kidnapping.)

Mangione is fighting extradition to New York City. The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate appeared for a hearing on December 10 at Pennsylvania's Blair County Courthouse, where a lawyer, Thomas Dickey, told the judge that Mangione was contesting his extradition. Police arrested Mangione in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9 on local charges and later arraigned. Mangione made a bail request, which the judge denied during the hearing.

The suspect will remain at Pennsylvania's Huntingdon State Correctional Institution during the extradition proceedings. Dickey told reporters on December 10 that Mangione would plead not guilty to all the charges in Pennsylvania.

In an interview with CNN that evening, Dickey also said that he anticipates Mangione would plead not guilty to the murder charge in New York and that he hadn't seen any evidence that officials in New York "have the right guy."

Mangione also faces four other charges related to the killing of the insurance CEO: two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second-degree, one count of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the third-degree.

A gun found on Mangione matched the three shell casings found at the site of the shooting, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a December 11 press conference.

Tisch added that the suspect's fingerprints also matched those found on a water bottle and snack bar wrapper discarded near the crime scene.

During Mangione's arrest, officers found a three-page handwritten document "that speaks to both his motivation and mindset," Tisch said at a separate press conference on December 9.

An internal NYPD report obtained by The New York Times gave the clearest view of the potential motive yet. Based on the so-called manifesto discovered, Mangione "likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices," the NYPD report said, as reported by the Times.

Mangione "appeared to view the targeted killing of the company's highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and 'power games,' asserting in his note he is the 'first to face it with such brutal honesty,'" according to the NYPD report by the department's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau, the Times reported.

In a statement to Business Insider, representatives for Nino Mangione — a Maryland state legislator and a cousin of Mangione's — declined to comment on the news of Mangione's arrest.

"Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione," the statement read. "We only know what we have read in the media. Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest."

Recognized at a McDonald's

Mangione was eating in an Altoona McDonald's when an employee recognized him from the several surveillance images that authorities released in the aftermath of Thompson's killing and called the police, New York police said at the December 9 press conference.

Altoona police found Mangione in the McDonald's with multiple fake IDs and a US passport, as well as a firearm and a suppressor "both consistent with the weapon used" in the shooting of Thompson in the heart of Manhattan, Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, said.

The gun appeared to be a "ghost gun" that may have been made on a 3-D printer. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at the press conference that such a gun could fire a 9-millimeter round.

A Pennsylvania criminal complaint filed against Mangione said officers found a black 3-D-printed pistol and 3-D-printed silencer inside the suspect's backpack.

When Altoona officers asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he "became quiet and started to shake," the criminal complaint said.

Clothing, including a mask, was also recovered "consistent with those worn" by the suspect wanted for Thompson's killing, along with a fake New Jersey ID matching the ID that the murder suspect used to check into a Manhattan hostel before the attack, Tisch said.

Based on the handwritten document that police found on Mangione, according to Kenny, "it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America."

During a December 10 interview on NBC's "Today" show, Tisch said the "manifesto" revealed "anti-corporatist sentiment" and "a lot of issues with the healthcare industry."

"But as to like particular, specific motive that'll come out as this investigation continues to unfold over the next weeks and month," the NYPD commissioner said.

NBC News and The New York Times, each citing an unnamed senior law enforcement official, reported that the handwritten document read in part: "These parasites had it coming."

"I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done," it added, according to the reports.

Police believe that Mangione acted alone.

NYPD investigators traveled to Altoona last week to interview Mangione after Altoona officers took him into custody.

Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks said at Mangione's Pennsylvania arraignment that Mangione was carrying $10,000 in cash, including foreign currency, according to the Associated Press.

Mangione disputed the amount in court.

Mangione was active on social media

Mangione posted and amplified posts about technological advances like artificial intelligence on X. He also posted about fitness and healthy living.

He frequently retweeted posts by the writer Tim Urban and commentator Jonathan Haidt about the promise and perils of technology. He also appeared to be a fan of Michael Pollan, known for his writing about food and ethics.

Other deleted social media posts showed support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and expressed skepticism toward both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.

At the top of his profile was a header image with three images: a photo of himself, smiling, shirtless on a mountain ridge, a Pokemon, and an x-ray with four pins or screws visible in the lower back.

Mangione founded a company called AppRoar Studios in 2015 while still in high school. AppRoar released an iPhone game called Pivot Plane that is no longer available.

The two other cofounders of AppRoar could not be reached for comment.

Mangione's X account has been deactivated. A spokesperson for YouTube said his three accounts on the platform were also terminated, but that they had not been active for about seven months.

A manhunt

Mangione's arrest followed a nearly week-long manhunt.

According to police, Manigone was born and raised in Maryland, and has ties to San Francisco, California. His last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The New York Post, citing law-enforcement sources, reported that Mangione's mother reported him missing in mid-November.

Law-enforcement sources told ABC News that FBI agents and members of the NYPD spoke to the mother a day before Mangione's arrest, following a tip, and that in the conversation she indicated that the person in the surveillance photos could be her son.

Kenny, the NYPD's chief of detectives, said that Manigone has no prior arrest history in New York and no known arrests in the US.

A Luigi Mangione with a matching birthday and address received a citation for simple trespass for entering a forbidden area of a state park in Hawaii in November 2023. He pleaded no contest and paid a $100 fine.

"For just over five days, our NYPD investigators combed through thousands of hours of video, followed up on hundreds of tips, and processed every bit of forensic evidence — DNA, fingerprints, IP addresses and so much to tighten the net," Tisch said at Monday's press conference announcing the arrest of Manigone.

Thompson was shot multiple times on a Midtown sidewalk as he was walking toward the Hilton hotel. He was steps away from a side entrance to the hotel — where he was set to speak at UnitedHealth Group's investor conference — when a hooded gunman opened fire on him from behind.

The chief executive of the nation's largest health insurer was struck at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf, police said.

Surveillance footage showed the gunman firing his weapon as Thompson, wearing a blue suit jacket, walked several feet in front of him.

The gunman fled the scene, first on foot and then on an electric bike, which he rode into Central Park before ultimately escaping from New York City, police said.

Shell casings and bullets found at the scene had the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" written on them, according to multiple reports citing unnamed sources. BI couldn't independently confirm these details.

In the aftermath of the attack, the NYPD offered a $10,000 reward for tips leading to the gunman's arrest, with the FBI offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

A spokesperson for UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, reacted to news of Manigone's arrest in a statement to BI, saying: "Our hope is that today's apprehension brings some relief to Brian's family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy. We thank law enforcement and will continue to work with them on this investigation. We ask that everyone respect the family's privacy as they mourn."

• The killer of UnitedHealthcare's CEO appears to have planned carefully, experts in NYPD manhunts told BI.
• He took key precautions that delayed his capture, they said — including fleeing into Central Park.
• The park is the only part of Manhattan not blanketed by surveillance cameras, they said.

Update: A "person of interest," 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was arrested in connection with Brian Thompson's death in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday.

As the search for the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson enters its third day, the New York Police Department continues to release key evidence in hopes that the public will help.

They've shared crisp, full-color surveillance photos of the suspect and dangled offers of $10,000 for tips leading to his capture. They've described his movements down to the minute, detailing how he stopped at a Starbucks before opening fire on the sidewalk outside the New York Hilton Midtown, then hopped on an electric bike, fleeing into nearby Central Park.

But the ongoing release of information is just a glimpse of what's taking place in the nation's largest police department: a round-the-clock mobilization mixing old-fashioned shoe-leather investigation with high-tech sleuthing.

Two veterans of high-profile NYPD murder manhunts described these efforts to catch the insurance giant CEO's killer to Business Insider, and they said it was no surprise that he remained at large nearly two days after the shooting.

Both said the shooter appeared to have planned carefully— and one raised the possibility that he had professional firearms training.

"First of all, it's a big-ass gun, and the way he's holding it speaks of the military to me — it's clear he knew what he was doing," said Joan Illuzzi, a former homicide prosecutor.

"That — and having his getaway so well planned — says to me that this is a well-thought-out assassination," said Illuzzi, who was chief of the Manhattan district attorney's trial division before leaving for private practice in 2022.

"He absolutely planned this out," said Salvatore Tudisco, a retired NYPD homicide detective.

Tudisco was chief investigator the last time there was a dayslong manhunt for the killer of a CEO in New York City — the millionaire tech founder Fahim Saleh.

Both Illuzzi and Tudisco said they thought the suspect would be identified soon, thanks to the clear surveillance images police have released to the national media.

"That's their best option — send it across the country. Someone will know him," Tudisco said of the photos.

Once he's ID'd, it may take a few days longer to actually apprehend him, the two said.

"To ride into Central Park, that's really bright," said Tudisco. "It's the only blind spot in a city where there's cameras everywhere."

"There are pockets of Central Park that don't have video," said Illuzzi, who's now of counsel at Perry Law in Manhattan.

Thompson's shooter most likely had a change of clothing in the gray backpack he wore, Illuzzi said.

As soon as they realized he biked into the park, the NYPD would have dispatched a small army of officers to pull video from the street surveillance cameras surrounding every footpath and roadway on its perimeter, Tudisco said.

The resulting scouring of surveillance video may have led police to an Upper West Side youth hostel two blocks west of the park, where the suspect is reported to have stayed the night before, Tudisco said.

Many key clues would have stemmed from tracing the shooter's path on the trail of cameras that recorded his movements before and after the shooting, Tudisco said.

A water bottle and burner phone that may have been discarded by the suspect are also reportedly being tested for clues, he said.

Then there are the clues left on the bullet shells themselves. Police said three shells had words written on them. One read "Deny," another "Delay," and the third "Depose."

These could suggest a motive, Illuzzi said. She said it was likely investigators were immersed in scouring litigation records and contested insurance claims for more clues.

• UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot Wednesday in New York City.
• The words "deny," "defend," and "depose" were found on shell casings at the scene, reports said.
• Officials are investigating whether the words are related to a motive.

Police found the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" on casings from bullets used to kill the UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson on Wednesday in New York City, reports said.

The words were found on casings at the scene in Manhattan, and police are investigating whether they indicate that the motive for the crime was the insurance company's response to a claim, ABC News first reported.

Thompson's wife, Paulette, told NBC on Wednesday that he had spoken to her about receiving death threats she believed were related to a "lack of coverage."

"There have been some threats," she told the network. "Basically, I don't know, a lack of coverage? I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."

A spokesperson for UnitedHealthcare did not immediately respond to requests for comment on a potential link between the shooting and a coverage-denial issue. Paulette Thompson couldn't be reached by BI for comment.

The words on the cases are similar to the title of a 2010 book, "Delay Deny Defend," which is subtitled, "Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It."

The author of the book, Jay M. Feinman, a legal professor who specializes in insurance law, torts, and contract law, declined a request for comment.

Police are still searching for the shooter. Authorities have described the killing as a "targeted attack."

Thompson was gunned down at about 6:45 a.m. outside the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan. The shooter fled the scene before police arrived.

UnitedHealthcare is the largest private insurer in the US, and Thompson was in New York for an investor meeting when he was killed.

The "investor day" event was then canceled.

• UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in New York City on Wednesday, the police said.
• The NYPD said Thompson, 50, appeared to be killed in a targeted attack.
• Police on Monday arrested a "person of interest" identified as 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.

Police in Pennsylvania on Monday arrested a "person of interest" in connection to the fatal Midtown Manhattan shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The 26-year-old man, identified as Luigi Mangione, was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and charged with local gun and forgery charges, New York Police Department officials said during a press conference.

Mangione was arraigned on Monday evening and charged on five counts, including two felonies: forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of crime, and false identification to law enforcement, according to a criminal complaint viewed by Business Insider. He was ordered held without bail.

Mangione was arrested after an employee at a McDonald's recognized him from the surveillance photos circulated by law enforcement and called the police. The complaint said Mangione was wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop when Altoona police arrived.

Mangione had fake IDs, a US passport, and a gun and silencer "consistent with" the one thought to have been used by the gunman who killed Thompson, police said. The criminal complaint said the gun and silencer had been 3-D-printed.

NYPD officials said Mangione was also found with a three-page handwritten document that suggested "he has some ill will toward corporate America."

Mangione is expected to be extradited to New York to face additional charges, NYPD officials said.

The manhunt for Thompson's killer

The NYPD had released more than a half-dozen surveillance images of the man suspected to be the shooter in the December 4 attack in the hopes that tips from the public could help authorities track him down.

The latest photos of the man suspected of the shooting — which has been described by police as a targeted attack — included one showing him in the back of what appears to be a taxi, wearing a blue medical mask and a dark hood. Another image showed the man standing outside the vehicle's window wearing a mask, hood, and dark puffer jacket.

Moments after shooting Thompson dead in the heart of Manhattan Wednesday, police say the gunman fled the scene, first on foot and then on an electric bike, which he rode into Central Park. Police believe the shooter ultimately escaped New York City by bus.

Investigators believed the gunman caught a cab on Manhattan's Upper West Side and directed the driver to a bus station as he made his getaway following the shooting, Bloomberg reported.

Police officials told CNN they believed the man left New York City via the Port Authority's George Washington Bridge Bus Station in Washington Heights.

"We have video of him entering the Port Authority bus terminal. We don't have any video of him exiting, so we believe he may have gotten on a bus," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said in a December 6 interview. "Those buses are interstate buses. That's why we believe he may have left New York City," Kenny said.

NYPD divers were seen over the weekend searching the waters in Central Park for any evidence in the shooting.

A law-enforcement source told CNN that investigators had found a backpack in Central Park that they believed belonged to the gunman. The backpack contained a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money, CNN reported, citing law-enforcement officials and sources.

It was not immediately clear if other items were found in the backpack.

Kenny said on December 6 that officials were investigating the possibility that the gunman may have used a veterinary gun, used on farms to euthanize large animals quietly, in the shooting, CNN reported.

A law-enforcement source previously told BI that the gun used by the shooter appeared to be equipped with a silencer, according to surveillance footage of the attack.

Most of the images that police have released of the man wanted in the shooting show him with a mask covering the bottom half of his face, except a set of two, which NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the "money shot," that showed the clearest images yet of the suspect unmasked.

"He's been traveling and walking around the streets of New York City largely in a mask, with his face covered. We had to go through lots of video evidence to get that one money shot with the mask down," Tisch told CNN in a December 6 interview.

Tisch said that police released the photos of the man not wearing a mask because they wanted a "wider audience to see the picture outside of New York City."

"We are right now processing a tremendous amount of evidence in this case," the NYPD commissioner told the news outlet, adding that authorities already have "lots of forensic evidence," including fingerprints and DNA evidence.

Police have called the killing of Thompson premeditated

Police have described Thompson's killing as "a brazen, targeted attack."

Thompson was set to speak at UnitedHealth Group's 8 a.m. investor conference on December 4 when a hooded gunman opened fire from behind, striking him at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf, the police said.

"Every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre-planned, targeted attack," Tisch told reporters at a press conference hours after the shooting.

"It appears the suspect was lying in wait for several minutes," Tisch added.

The NYPD offered a $10,000 reward for tips leading to the gunman's arrest, and the FBI said it was also offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the gunman's arrest and conviction.

Multiple reports said that authorities conducted forensic tests on a discarded cellphone, protein bar wrapper, and water bottle.

How the suspect arrived in New York is also becoming clearer.

Authorities believe he may have traveled to the city 10 days before the shooting on November 24 on a bus that originated in Atlanta and dropped him off at Manhattan's main bus depot, the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It was not yet clear where along the route he boarded the bus.

The Atlanta Police Department announced Friday that the NYPD contacted it and will provide assistance in the investigation as needed.

The unmasked images of the wanted man released by police were captured at a hostel on New York City's Upper West Side, a law enforcement official told CNN, when an employee asked the man to lower his face mask.

The Times, citing a senior law enforcement official, previously reported that the suspect in the shooting used a fake New Jersey ID to book a room at the hostel he was staying at in the days before the attack.

Retired NYPD homicide detective Salvatore Tudisco previously told BI that the photos showing the man's face were likely to speed up the manhunt.

Tudisco led the city's last big manhunt for a murdered CEO, Gokada founder Fahim Saleh, whose killer was captured in three days by traces on credit card, cellphone, and surveillance camera evidence.

"That's the best option — to send it across the country, and someone will know him," the ex-detective said of the latest images.

He added that a facial-recognition trace would be less of an option because the hostel surveillance images do not show the man's full face.

Investigators can still try to run the photo through state driver's license and arrest databases, Tudisco said. However, some states require a judge to issue a warrant before state driver's licenses can be used as evidence in an arrest and beyond.

Shooter was 'proficient in the use of firearms,' police said

Kenny said at the NYPD's press conference in the aftermath of the shooting that the gunman arrived on 6th Avenue about five minutes before Thompson. The shooter's weapon appeared to jam during the attack, he added.

"From watching the video, it does seem that he's proficient in the use of firearms, as he was able to clear the malfunctions pretty quickly," Kenny said.

Surveillance footage captured the incident, showing the gunman firing his weapon as Thompson, wearing a blue suit jacket, was walking several feet in front of him.

A law-enforcement source, who is not authorized to talk to the press, told Business Insider that the gun appeared to be equipped with a silencer. The source added that the gunman "definitely knew" where Thompson was going to be.

The police said officers found Thompson unconscious and unresponsive two minutes after the shooting. Emergency responders rushed him to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:12 a.m.

Police have not identified a motive

The shooting occurred blocks from Midtown holiday tourism landmarks, including Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center, whose Christmas tree lighting took place on December 4.

In the aftermath of the shooting, six evidence cups were visible on the taped-off section of the sidewalk where the attack occurred.

"That's covering the shell casings," an officer at the scene told BI, declining to give their name because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

UnitedHealth Group canceled its "investor day" conference shortly after reports of the shooting broke.

Investigators have not yet determined a motive for the killing.

Kenny said investigators were combing through Thompson's social media and interviewing employees and family members and would be talking to law enforcement in Minnesota, where Thompson lived and where UnitedHealth Group and UnitedHealthcare are based.

Thompson's wife, Paulette Thompson, previously told NBC News in an interview that her husband had been receiving threats.

"Basically, I don't know, a lack of coverage?" she said. "I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."

The police department in his hometown of Maple Grove, Minnesota, told BI it hadn't been notified of any threats he might have received. Theresa Keehn, the Maple Grove police administrator, initially said Maple Grove had no record of calls for service to his house. Still, the department later said it had responded to a 2018 call from Paulette Thompson. An incident report said she had been walking to bed when she saw the front door deadbolt turn and grew afraid someone was inside the house. The police did not find anyone inside the home.

An unnamed senior law enforcement official told NBC News that shell cases found at the scene were inscribed with the words "deny," "defend," and "depose." BI has not independently confirmed the description of the evidence, and an NYPD spokesperson didn't return a request for comment.

Jay M. Feinman, an author and legal professor specializing in insurance law, torts, and contract law, wrote a similarly titled book "Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It."

The book is dubbed an exposé of insurance injustice and explains how people can be more careful when shopping for insurance policies and what to do when pursuing a disputed claim.

The NYPD said Thompson arrived in New York City on Monday and was staying at a hotel across the street from where he was shot.

Police in Maple Grove, Minnesota, told BI homes of Thompson and his wife in a suburb outside Minneapolis were targeted with fake bomb threats Wednesday evening, more than 13 hours after the shooting.

Thompson was remembered as a 'hardworking Midwest guy.'

Thompson spent 20 years at UnitedHealth Group and was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the health-benefits unit, since April 2021.

While announcing his promotion, the company said Thompson would "drive continued growth across the global, employer, individual, specialty, and government benefits business while continuing the company's focus on ensuring access to high-quality, affordable healthcare."

Leaders in the healthcare industry shared their condolences in the hours after Thompson's death.

UnitedHealth's shares were broadly unchanged after the shooting. They've gained about 12% in the past 12 months, less than the 32% increase in the S&P 500, but outperforming competitors, including CVS Health, Humana, and Elevance Health. During its third-quarter results in October, it gave what UBS called a "more conservative than usual" outlook for fiscal 2025. Ahead of Wednesday's investor day, it gave more detailed guidance for next year, forecasting revenue of $450 billion to $455 billion and adjusted earnings of $29.50 to $30 a share. The company also suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted pharmacy deliveries earlier this year.

By the afternoon of the shooting, UnitedHealth Group had removed the names of its executives from its website, an archived version of its site shows. Some executives also appeared to have deleted their LinkedIn profiles, though it's unclear when.

Thompson had previously served as CEO of the group's government programs, running its programs for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

Thompson's former brother-in-law, Bassel El-Kasaby, told Business Insider that Thompson was "a good guy, very successful and very humble — just a decent, hardworking Midwest guy."

"Whoever did this is a coward and a loser," El-Kasaby said.

Correction: December 4, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated Thompson's work history at United Health. He worked at the company for 20 years but was not an executive there for 20 years.

Update December 9, 2024: This story was updated with details on the arrest of a "person of interest" in the shooting.

• Trump hopes to make his one criminal conviction disappear prior to his January 20 inauguration.
• In a filing made public Tuesday, he says he's immune from prosecution even now, as president-elect.
• Sentencing in the NY hush-money case has been indefinitely delayed by this latest dismissal bid.

The US Supreme Court found in July that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution.

But is a president-elect also immune?

In a 72-page filing made public Tuesday, lawyers for Donald Trump argue just that — that he's immune from prosecution right now.

And so his hush-money conviction should be immediately dismissed, and his 34 felony convictions wiped clean, they argue.

"Following President Trumps' overwhelming victory in the 2024 Presidential election, Presidential immunity is an unavoidable legal impediment to further proceedings in this case," his lawyers argue.

The massive motion to dismiss mixes old grievances against New York prosecutors and the trial judge — all are portrayed as politically motivated — with citations from caselaw and federal policies spanning from the nineteenth century to just last month.

The filing cites the US Supreme Court's July 1, landmark presidential immunity decision, which extends broad protections from prosecution to sitting presidents. Presidents-elect, during their brief but crucial transition to the office, warrant the same protections, Trump's lawyers argue.

The filing also cites special counsel Jack Smith's decision barely a week ago to drop Trump's two federal indictments. That decision was premised on longstanding Department of Justice policy barring the prosecution of sitting presidents, Trump's lawyers noted.

In moving to scuttle the two federal cases, the DOJ found that this ban on prosecuting sitting presidents also applies to presidents-elect, Trump's lawyers argue.

Trump's lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, are asking the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, to immediately dismiss the hush-money indictment.

Trump was convicted six months ago on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Jurors found he made false entries in Trump Organization records throughout his first year in office in order to retroactively hide a hush-money payment that silenced porn actress Stormy Daniels 11 days before the 2016 election.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg framed the case as a conspiracy to interfere with the election. Trump was convicted after a five-week trial and ten hours of jury deliberations over two days.

Bragg has promised to fight the claim that such a thing as presidential-elect immunity even exists.

"We believe these arguments are incorrect," Bragg wrote in response to a November 19 defense letter. Bragg's letter promises to counter this latest bid to dismiss the case. Prosecutors are due to file a response brief by Monday, December 9.

Only after the judge decides if the case is dismissed can Trump's sentencing — already postponed three times — be calendared or canceled.

And even if Merchan calendars it, Trump's lawyers have promised to halt the sentencing by immediately appealing his decision through the federal court system — to SCOTUS if necessary.

The argument that a president-elect has immunity

So why does Trump believe he enjoys presidential immunity from prosecution even now, as president-elect?

Blanche and Bove argue that there is little material difference between President Trump's current status after his victory in the national election and that of a sitting President following inauguration.

A second argument for special treatment of presidents-elect, made repeatedly by the two lawyers in the past month, draws on the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which provides for the "orderly transfer of Executive powers."

"The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 was passed 'to promote the orderly transfer of the executive power in connection with the expiration of the term of office of a President and the inauguration of a new President,'" Trump's lawyers write now, quoting from the act.

The Act requires "all officers of the Government" to "take appropriate lawful steps to avoid or minimize distruptions that might be occasioned by the tranfer of the of the executive power," they argue.

The brief also cites the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which holds federal law as taking precedence over state law.

Here, Blanche and Bove page through two centuries of caselaw, quoting, among other citations, an 1819 court ruling that found States "have no power" to "retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control" the President or other federal authorities."

"President Trump's status as President-elect and the soon-to-be sitting President is a legal impediment to further criminal proceedings based on the Presidential immunity doctrine and the Supremacy Clause," they write.

In the furtherance of justice

Trump's lawyers also argue that the case should be dismissed under New York law, which allows an indictment to be voided "in furtherance of justice."

A so-called interest of justice dismissal would require Merchan to find "some compelling factor, consideration or circumstance" under which continuing a prosecution "would constitute or result in injustice," as the act itself describes.

In considering the interest of justice, Merchan must weigh the strength and seriousness of the offense, the extent of the harm it caused, and the "history, character, and condition of the defendant."

He must also weigh "the impact of a dismissal upon the confidence of the public in the criminal justice system."

Blanche and Bove did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA's office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.