Defense attorneys for Luigi Mangione, charged with the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, are arguing “an additional reason” why Attorney General Pam Bondi’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty should be stricken from the federal case. They now allege that Ms. Bondi has financial ties to the UnitedHeath Group and thus a conflict of interest. 

“The Attorney General’s past and present financial interest in Ballard Partners, which continues to lobby the government on behalf of UHG and UHC, implicates Mr. Mangione’s due process rights because the very person empowered to seek his death has a financial stake in the case she is prosecuting,” defense attorneys wrote in a reply brief filed late Friday evening, referring to UnitedHealth Group (UHG) of which UnitedHealthcare (UHC) is the health insurance division, and whose CEO was Thompson, who was fatally shot on a midtown Manhattan street in front of the Hilton hotel last December.

Mr. Mangione is being tried for murder first by the State of New York. But he also faces federal murder charges for Thompson’s killing, which are death penalty eligible, and last April Ms. Bondi publicly announced that the Department of Justice would seek capital punishment in the case.    

“The Attorney General personally directed line prosecutors to seek the death penalty in a public press release delivered via social media, and then appeared on national television to claim that, based on her own experience as a capital crimes prosecutor, Mr. Mangione deserved to be executed.” 

Ms. Bondi. who served as the elected Republican attorney general for the State of Florida between 2011 and 2019, was a strong supporter of the death penalty with several men executed during her tenure. In 2013, she famously postponed an execution so she could attend a fundraiser for her reelection (she later apologized). 

Following her service as Florida attorney general and before President Trump appointed Ms. Bondi to his cabinet, she was a partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which lists UHG as one of its clients on its website.    

According to Friday’s filing, “UHG paid Ballard Partners at least $250,000 for lobbying services” in 2024, and increased the amount to $450,000 in 2025. Defense attorneys allege that Ms. Bondi “has a personal and financial interest in the work Ballard has done on UHG’s behalf.” 

“The Attorney General derived and continues to receive personal benefits from Ballard in the form of a profit-sharing plan from Ballard’s professional association with all of its paying clients, including UHG.” The attorneys wrote, concluding that her “financial connection to UHG represents a conflict of interest that should have caused her to recuse herself from making any decisions on this case.” 

The defense found that Ms. Bondi’s “failure to do so clearly violated the due process rights of Mr. Mangione and provides yet another reason why the Notice of Intent should be stricken.”  

Mr. Mangione’s attorneys did not say if Ms. Bondi was directly attached to Ballard’s UnitedHealth engagement. Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff, also worked for Ballard Partners, which employs many well-connected political operatives. 

Mr. Mangione, 27, faces charges in three separate jurisdictions for Thompson murder: In New York state court, in Pennsylvania state court, (he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania) and in the Southern District of New York, where his charges include stalking and murder through the use of a firearm, a death penalty eligible crime.

On April 1, roughly two weeks before the federal indictment on April 17, Ms. Bondi released a statement on her social media declaring that the Department of Justice was going to seek the death penalty in the high-profile case.

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America. After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”  

No date has been scheduled for the federal trial yet, nor for any of Mr. Mangione’s pending trials. The defendant, who is currently incarcerated at the federal government’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.    

Shortly after Ms. Bondi’s public statement, defense attorneys filed a motion to preclude the government from seeking the death penalty, arguing that the statements had violated their client’s due process rights.

In particular, they cited a comment she made on Fox News Sunday in April, when she said, “I was a capital prosecutor. I tried death penalty cases throughout my career. If there was ever a death case, this is one.”

The defense attorneys, who characterized Ms. Bondi’s intention to “kill” Mr. Mangione as a “political stunt,” further argued that the DOJ had “abandoned” statutory procedures, when, for example, the defense’s request “to prepare a fulsome mitigation submission to the Department of Justice’s Capital Committee” was “ignored.” 

The district judge presiding over the federal case, Margaret Garnett, told the attorney general to refrain from making public statements to ensure a fair trial. Consequently, no further statements were released by Ms. Bondi, and attorneys for the Justice Department wrote in a letter to the judge that they “promptly directed” all social media posts be taken down and that the officials in question are not part of the prosecution team.   

On April 30, Business Insider first reported that the interim U.S. attorney  for the Southern District, Jay Clayton, recused himself from Mr. Mangione’s case, and the district’s criminal division chief, Perry A. Carbone had taken on the case. Mr. Clayton did not give a reason for his recusal, but some legal observers said it likely was an effort to make the Mangione prosecution appear insulated from any political influence from Main Justice.

In November, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dominic Gentile, Jun Xiang, Alexandra Messiter, and Thomas Wright, who are arguing for the prosecution, defended the government’s decision to seek the death penalty. 

“Pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect,” the federal prosecutors stated, adding that “high-visibility cases” were not a novelty in their court, which recently tried the disgraced music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, as well as New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, writing “publicity, even intense, is not novel in this district.”  

The Southern District of New York, however, has not secured a death sentence from a jury since the 1950s. 

On Friday, Mr. Mangione’s defense attorneys, who’ve been raising the Ballard Partners issue since the spring, alleged that Ms. Bondi has personally benefited from UHG and should thus retract her intent to seek the death penalty.  

“Further, as the Chairperson of Ballard Partner’s Corporate Regulatory Compliance practice, the Attorney General knew or should have known that UHG, the largest and richest health care company in the world with annual revenue of about $400,000,000,000 (four hundred billion dollars), was one of her partnership’s clients, and that she personally financially profited from Ballard’s lucrative relationship with UHG,” the attorneys wrote.  

The defense team also cited a letter, which Ms. Bondi signed on January 14 and sent to an ethics official at the Department of Justice, in which she promised not to participate in any matters involving her prior Ballard Partners clients. 

“Upon confirmation, I will resign from my position with Ballard Partners,” Ms. Bondi wrote, adding that for the period of one year, she would “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which I know Ballard Partners…” unless she is “authorized to participate,” her letter stated. 

Ms. Bondi has not yet publicly responded to the claim Mr. Mangione’s murder case implicates her in a conflict of interest.

The district judge has also not yet ruled on the motion, which further seeks to drop the firearm charges against Mr. Mangione, as the Sun reported, and requests to dismiss evidence recovered and statements made during the arrest from the federal trial. 

The next hearing in federal court is scheduled for January 9.