Trump’s DOJ May Have Violated Luigi Mangione’s Right to a Fair Trial

A federal judge said Wednesday that Department of Justice officials may have violated a criminal rule and a court order by making prejudicial statements about Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett issued an order responding to a letter from Mangione’s lawyers, saying that it appears that multiple DOJ employees had violated a New York criminal rule barring lawyers from making public statements that could produce prejudice in a criminal case.

Garnett said that the employees had also violated an April court order “specifically identifying the structures of this rule for counsel and directing the prosecution team to ensure that the highest levels of the Department of Justice up to and including Attorney General Bondi were aware of and understood they were bound by this Rule.”

On Tuesday, lawyers for Mangione had submitted a letter containing evidence of public statements made by DOJ employees and White House officials that they argued had ruined his right to a fair trial. Mangione’s lawyers said federal officials had “indelibly prejudiced” their client by linking him to other unrelated acts of violence, including Ryan Routh’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the recent assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

One such instance was on September 19, when Chad Gilmartin, deputy director of the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, posted on X that Trump was “absolutely right” to claim that Mangione “shot someone in the back,” during an interview on Fox News. Gilmartin’s post was then shared by Brad Nieves, the chief of staff and associate deputy attorney general, and later deleted.

The letter also pointed to unfair statements the White House made against Mangione. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Mangione a “left-wing assassin [who] shot United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson right in the back in New York City.” Earlier this week, in a press release accompanying Trump’s illegal designation of antifa as a terrorist organization, the White House had included Mangione’s name.

During an interview on Fox News earlier this week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to Mangione while complaining about a so-called “organized campaign of domestic terrorism” from the left.

CEO Brian Thompson “was brutally gunned down by another self-described so-called anti-fascist that was then celebrated by other self-described anti-fascists, so of course, really Communist revolutionaries,” said Miller, who reposted a clip of him saying this on X.

Mangione’s lawyers argued in the letter that “the Government very well knows this statement to be false as they are in possession of his alleged extensive journal writings where the writer never once mentions being anti- (or pro) fascist.”

“The attempts to connect Mr. Mangione with these incidents and paint him as a ‘left wing’ violent extremist are false, prejudicial, and part of a greater political narrative that has no place in any criminal case, especially one where the death penalty is at stake,” the letter stated. “Mr. Mangione in fact does not support these violent actions, does not condone past or future political violence, nor is he in any way aligned with the group mentioned in the White House press release.”

Garnett gave the government until October 3 to provide an explanation as to how the violations occurred and what steps they would take to prevent any more. She specifically warned the deputy attorney general that further violations could result in sanctions, such as personal financial penalties or contempt of court findings.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress comedian Jimmy Kimmel were thwarted by the Streisand effect, whereby attempts to censor something only cause it to circulate wider.

Kimmel’s Tuesday monologue—the first since Jimmy Kimmel Live! was canceled, then uncanceled, by ABC—has reached a massive audience and garnered significant media attention.

Whereas, CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported, the median video on Kimmel’s YouTube channel in the last six months has been viewed 240,000 times, Kimmel’s returning monologue has already garnered more than 11 million views on YouTube, with the number still rapidly growing. Another indicator of significant interest in Kimmel’s show, Enten observed, is a record-high number of Google searches for the time Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs, which were up over 10,000 percent.

Kimmel joked about the influx of attention in his monologue, saying of Trump, “You almost have to feel sorry for him. He tried his best to cancel me. Instead, he forced millions of people to watch the show. That backfired bigly! He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”

ABC’s since-reversed decision to cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live! came after Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair threatened companies that platformed Kimmel, due to the host’s jokes about MAGA’s reaction to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

An hour before Kimmel’s show returned to air Tuesday, Trump complained, “I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!” The president vowed to go after the network for being too favorable to his political opponents.

New Mexico Republican state Senator Jay Block’s own daughter excoriated him for putting the priorities of the Israeli government over those of his constituents with a recent trip to Israel for the “50 States, One Israel” conference.

“My dad and a bunch of other loser politicians from New Mexico went to meet with Netanyahu, and I don’t know what they could possibly discuss,” Maddie Block, 28, said in a TikTok posted on Tuesday. “How does meeting with Netanyahu help the local people of New Mexico?”

“I genuinely belive that Israel is like, paying my dad now to pedal propaganda,” Maddie Block said, directly mentioning a “dissertation-length” pro-Israel post from her father. “He was … saying that the genocide is a lie, and that civilians aren’t being killed, and the IDF is doing everything they can to minimize casualities. And I’m like, how much are they paying my dad? How much is his soul? ’Cuz it seems like he has sold his soul to the devil.” 

Senator Block was one of 250 politicians from both parties who attended the “50 States, One Israel” conference earlier this month, in which they were lobbied by the Israeli government for more funding in their genocide of Palestinians (and met with a uniquely awful rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that has now gone viral). That’s what Maddie Block’s father was doing instead of representing New Mexicans. 

“It was a privilege to be part of the largest diplomatic delegation to ever visit the state of Israel,” Senator Block wrote before moving to shamelessly deny and justify the genocide of innocent Palestians, which has left at least 65,000 men, women, and children dead. 

“If Israel has genocidal intent, they’re sure bad at it. Just one day of bombing Gaza (with the capabilities the Israeli Army and Air Force has) would utterly destroy them, but instead the IDF does everything possible to avoid killing Gazan civilians who are being used as human shields,” the Republican state senator said after the conference. “They strive to limit casualties by warning Gazans ahead of time to leave battle zones with millions of text messages, phone calls, dropping leaflets, and making smaller targeted attacks.” 

This is a false narrative straight from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel continues to bomb hospitals, execute aid seekers, and shoot children in the head for fun.  

Oklahoma will soon have Turning Point USA chapters in every high school across the state.

Superintendent Ryan Walters unveiled the alliance with the far-right youth organization via social media Tuesday, celebrating the partisan compact while accusing teachers across Oklahoma of “lying about American history.”

“Radical leftist teachers’ unions have dominated classrooms for far too long, and we are taking them back,” Walters said in a post.

The development comes barely two weeks after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus in Utah. The announcement was recirculated by Turning Point’s X account.

There are some 900 official college chapters and around 1,200 high school chapters of Turning Point USA across the nation, but the conservative advocacy nonprofit received more than 54,000 inquiries for new campus chapters in the 48 hours after Kirk’s assassination, according to TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet.

“We have seen the outpouring from parents, teachers, and students, who want to be engaged in the meaningful work going on at Turning Point,” Walters said in a video statement. “They want their young people to be engaged in a process that understands free speech, open engagement, dialogue about American greatness, and a dialogue around American values.”

Oklahoma’s educational bureaucracy has proven to be one of the most MAGA-friendly in the nation. Last year, Walters filled a 55,000-unit order for Donald Trump’s $60-a-pop God Bless the U.S.A. Bible to be used as classroom editions. Months prior, Walters unveiled new guidelines for teaching Bibles in schools, as well as new consequences for districts that refused to participate.

Walters also appointed Chaya Raichik—the woman behind the far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ social media account Libs of TikTok—to the Oklahoma state Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee, allowing the MAGA influencer to decide what children across the state are allowed to read. Prior to her appointment, Oklahoma was ranked fourth in the nation for the most banned books, according to a 2022 report by Pen America.

Top officials in the Trump administration rushed Wednesday to claim that a shooting at the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office was part of a wider trend of violence targeting law enforcement.

It’s still unclear what the shooter’s motive was, or their intended target, but none of the victims of this shooting were ICE personnel. All three people injured were immigrant detainees who were being processed at the field office, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Two of those victims have died, and the shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to NBC.

Without knowing any information about the shooter, and with no acknowledgment that the victims weren’t actually law enforcement, officials quickly painted a picture.

“While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them. It must stop,” wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on X. “Please pray for the victims and their families.”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Noem’s attempt to tie the incident to a wider trend. “The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop. I’m praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families,” he wrote on X.

These officials’ statements are just the latest in a series of attempts by the Trump administration to craft a narrative that law enforcement officers are under a broader attack.

Immigration authorities have put forward inconsistent claims about the rising rate of assault against ICE officers. In July, DHS claimed a nearly 700 percent increase in assaults against ICE officers—which is technically true, but raw data showed that was the result of low overall numbers. There were just 79 assaults against immigration enforcement agents between January 21 and June 30, up from 10 during the same period last year.

The actual figure wasn’t all that terrifying, especially when considering ICE’s embrace of warrantless arrests, masked agents, and aggressive policing tactics as part of its sweeping immigration raids. It’s also unclear whether this figure includes patently phony allegations of assault, which have become all too common. Across the country, Trump’s Department of Justice has repeatedly struggled to secure indictments against protesters accused of assaulting immigration officials.