(NewsNation) — Luigi Mangione’s defense team said in a letter to a federal judge that the Trump administration is making him “a pawn to further its political agenda.”

Mangione is charged with the December 2024 killing of Brian Thompson, the former UnitedHealthcare CEO, and the Department of Justice is seeking the death penalty, which the former student’s legal counsel is attempting to have dismissed. They are more broadly attempting to have the federal murder indictment against him dismissed.

In the letter dated Oct. 16 to U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett, his attorneys wrote, “Mr. Mangione has been treated unjustly as part of a coordinated ongoing campaign by the United States government to paint him as a terrorist and violent leftwing extremist, despite there being absolutely no

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