Contributions to Luigi Mangione’s legal defense fund surpassed $1 million on Tuesday, organizers of the crowdfunded effort said, boosted by more than 28,000 individual contributors giving a median donation of $20.
Mangione, who turned 27 Tuesday, faces state and federal charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel late last year.
In a statement announcing the financial milestone, organizers spun the windfall as a referendum on the American healthcare system.
“The fund has become one of the few uncensored public forums for people in America to share their grievances with our lethal for-profit healthcare system and the indefensible economic and political order that has imposed it upon us,” they wrote.
“Even as the legal system becomes weaponized in the service of the billionaire class, people across the world continue to insist on the right to due process and to oppose the obvious cruelty of the regime’s attempt to kill him.”
At the direction of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty on the charge of “murder through use of a firearm.”
He faces additional state charges in New York, including an act of terrorism, and a handful of counts in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s.
Mangione pleaded not guilty to both the federal and state charges.
Bondi hit back at characterizations of Mangione as a folk hero of sorts last month when she announced plans to seek the death penalty, calling Thompson’s killing “an act of political violence.”
Bondi said in a statement, “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.”
Police said shell casings recovered at the scene of the shooting had the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” inscribed on them, apparently a reference to tactics employed by health insurance companies to deny services and payments.
Mangione was also found with a three-page manifesto that police said indicated he had “ill will towards corporate America.”
In a February statement, after the online fundraiser passed more than $300,000 in donations, Mangione’s lawyers said he “very much appreciates the outpouring of support.”