Last December, a masked man gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York. The gunman used a silencer, and after he shot Thompson, the gunman fled the scene on a bike and disappeared in Central Park. The NYPD then published photos of random white men in different jackets, claiming that all of the men were the same person, the shooter. It was bizarre. Then, days later, Luigi Mangione was arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s and the authorities swore up and down that Luigi was their guy, and they charged him with terrorism and perp-walked him through New York like they had just caught Hannibal Lector. In the past month or so, there was little news about Luigi. It felt like the powers that be finally understood that a lot of people were on Luigi’s side and all of their efforts to turn Luigi into a supervillain had fallen flat. Well, there’s a Luigi update: Luigi’s defense team has accepted almost $300K in donations from fans.

Luigi Mangione has accepted nearly $300,000 in donations from fans as he awaits trial for allegedly slaying Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, in December.

The December 4 Legal Committee, which is stewarding a fundraiser on GiveSendGo for Mangione’s legal defense, said in a post that it had made contact with Mangione’s legal team, which accepted the $297,000 raised by the campaign to pay the accused killer’s legal bills.

Mangione’s lead attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, told the December 4 Committee — so named for the date of Thompson’s murder — that Mangione “very much appreciates the outpouring of support” from what the committee says is more than 10,000 individual donors.

A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed that the post was genuine. Friedman Agnifilo declined to comment when reached by PEOPLE.

Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a prominent Maryland real estate family, is accused of gunning down Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel where he was heading to an investors’ conference.

Mangione faces federal murder charges that could land him the death penalty, as well as state murder charges that accuse him of committing an act of terrorism. He has pleaded not guilty to the state charges, and is currently being held pretrial at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

[From People]

You know what? I’m not surprised that “fans” are contributing to his legal defense. The only surprise is that they haven’t raised more – there was an outpouring of support for Luigi last December, but I guess it was “out of sight, out of mind” for some people. As I said, there was a real effort to turn Luigi into a supervillain and no one was buying it, so the powers that be just stopped talking about him entirely. It’s like the authorities were mad that there was an organic groundswell of support for a guy with a bad back who put the fear of god into healthcare executives.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.