I’ve made the effort to not go full conspiracist on Luigi Mangione, but one conspiracy I do believe (right now) is that Mangione’s arrest at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s probably didn’t happen the way we were told. As in, I’m not sure I believe that some McD’s worker recognized Mangione and called in a tip, and that tip was taken seriously enough for an arrest. The NYPD even said, following Mangione’s arrest, that he wasn’t really on their radar. Something fishy is going on with how they tracked him, and I do think “the McDonald’s tip” was some kind of cover story. In any case, Luigi was arrested on December 9th, and he’s been in custody in Pennsylvania ever since. New York has not managed to extradite Luigi yet, but they did manage to get Luigi indicted on Tuesday. They’re throwing the book at him.

A New York grand jury has indicted Luigi Mangione on terrorism charges related to the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The grand jury voted to indict Mangione on second-degree murder charges as a “crime of terrorism,” indicating the accused killer had intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping,”

Mangione is also charged with first-degree murder, which in New York is reserved for specific acts like the murder of police officers, murder-for-hire, killing a witness, or acts of terrorism. He also faces charges for possessing weapons and forged instruments.

“We allege that Luigi Mangione carried out the brazen, targeted and fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a statement issued on Dec. 17. “This type of premeditated, targeted gun violence cannot and will not be tolerated, and my office has been working day in and day out to bring the defendant to justice.”

The Ivy League-educated scion of a prominent Maryland family is the prime suspect in the killing of Thompson, who was gunned down on Dec. 4 in Midtown Manhattan by a masked assailant who then fled the scene on a bicycle, evading authorities. A motive has not been definitively established, but police believe Mangione harbored an animus towards corporate America, particularly the healthcare industry. The words “deny” and “depose” were found on shell casings at the scene, while “delay” was found on a bullet, per Bragg’s office — similar to a phrase used to describe the health insurance industry’s practices for scuttling claims.

[From People]

Was the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson an act of terrorism? Eh. It was absolutely first-degree murder. It was absolutely premeditated murder with a social/political message. But “violently hating healthcare executives” isn’t terrorism. It just isn’t. CB did some research on this too – in the past decade, there were mass shooters motivated by a white-supremacist ideology (Buffalo shooter, Charleston church shooter) and they were never charged with terrorism, even though they were clearly trying to terrorize the Black community.

Something else I didn’t know before today: Luigi had completely cut off contact with his family in the six months prior to murdering Thompson? Luigi’s mom filed a missing-person report. People keep coming back to Luigi’s back problems, and his back surgery last year. Something about the surgery and his health problems, it seems to have radicalized him, if you consider it radical to despise healthcare executives.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, social media.