New Details Tie Suspect to CEO Brian Thompson’s Murder

From the The Morning Dispatch on The Dispatch

Happy Thursday! We thought Sarah Isgur and David French were being clever when we saw the show notes for the latest edition of Advisory Opinions linking to the case of “U.S. vs. Approximately Two Dogs.”

Nope. It’s real.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• FBI Director Christopher Wray told FBI employees on Wednesday that he plans to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. His resignation, seven years into a 10-year term that is meant to insulate the role from politics, paves the way for Trump to nominate Kash Patel, which he had already announced he would do.

• South Korean police said they were blocked from searching President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office on Wednesday by security officials. Former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who resigned following Yoon’s brief declaration of martial law last week, was officially arrested on Wednesday for allegedly playing a key role in the decision. Kim apparently attempted suicide on Tuesday while in detention but is now in stable condition. The main opposition party submitted a second motion to impeach Yoon on Thursday.

• A minister in Afghanistan’s Taliban government was reportedly killed in a suicide blast in Kabul on Wednesday that was believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State. The slain minister for refugees was a senior member of the Taliban’s Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-linked group responsible for attacks on U.S. troops during the war in Afghanistan. He was also the highest-profile casualty of a bombing since the Taliban took over Afghanistan three years ago.

• Federal prosecutors announced on Wednesday that authorities in Northern California arrested a Chinese national accused of flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base to take photographs of the facility. He was arrested on Tuesday at San Francisco International Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to China.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he defended the Biden administration’s handling of the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Blinken argued that the administration was hamstrung by a bad deal struck by the first Trump administration in 2020. The testimony follows a report from the committee about the botched withdrawal released earlier this year.

• The Albertsons grocery chain on Wednesday backed out of its $25 billion merger agreement with the Kroger chain and sued Kroger, one day after two judges separately blocked the deal. In its lawsuit, Albertsons claimed Kroger had failed to fulfill its obligations for the merger, demanding $600 million in termination fees. Kroger called the accusations “baseless and without merit.” Federal Judge Adrienne Nelson on Tuesday blocked the merger, which the companies said was intended to help the chains compete with Walmart and Amazon, on the grounds that Walmart and Amazon were not their true competitors and the merger would likely result in higher prices for consumers.

• The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.3 percent month-over-month and 2.7 percent annually in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. That’s slightly more compared to the 0.2 percent monthly and 2.6 percent increase for the year that ended in October. Core inflation—less the more volatile food and energy prices—held steady from October at 3.3 percent annually in November.

Police Charge Suspect in Insurance CEO’s Death

Last Wednesday, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in a brazen attack in Midtown Manhattan. It was 6:45 a.m., and he was making his way to UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor meeting. His killer approached him on the sidewalk from behind and fired several rounds, striking Thompson in the back and leg. The 50-year-old was a 20-year veteran of the health insurance company. He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.

The week since Thompson’s murder has featured reactions that ranged from the expected sympathy for the victim of a brutal murder to tacit endorsements of the killer’s purported cause to explicit justifications for the targeted killing. Public figures—and even some lawmakers—have fallen short of wholeheartedly condemning the murder as his suspected killer looks set to face justice.

On Monday, police arrested the suspected shooter at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania after a five-day manhunt. New York prosecutors on Tuesday charged Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect, with second-degree murder and additional charges could follow. Authorities seem confident they’ve found their man, with police saying the suspect’s fingerprints matched prints at the crime scene. When arrested, Mangione had with him a gun that has since been matched to the one used in the killing, a notebook that reportedly detailed the plan to assassinate the CEO, and a manifesto that attacked the health care industry and in which Mangione appeared to admit to the killing, police said. The document also said he planned the murder alone.

Mangione is part of a prominent and wealthy Baltimore family. He attended a top private high school and completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was carrying $8,000 in cash when arrested. His family and friends said they hadn’t heard from him for months, and his mother reportedly filed a missing persons report for him in November.

He suffered from severe back pain, according to the landlord of a co-living space in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Mangione resided in 2022. Social media posts from accounts apparently belonging to Mangione also detailed a struggle with back pain and subsequent surgery. In his apparent manifesto, Mangione wrote that the “U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.” He mentioned UnitedHealthcare by name, saying the company “has grown and grown, but [h]as our life expectancy?”

“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done,” he wrote. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”

More details about what led Mangione from his privileged past to becoming a murder suspect will undoubtedly emerge as the case progresses. He has yet to be extradited from Pennsylvania to New York and was denied bail. The lawyer representing Mangione said Tuesday that his client plans to plead not guilty to every charge, but his comments came before New York Police Department officials said Wednesday they had matched Mangione’s prints and gun to the crime scene.

Instead of pervasive outrage over the brazen murder of a CEO in Midtown Manhattan, there has been a distinct outpouring of support for both Mangione and his stated cause. Online fandom for perpetrators isn’t uncommon following publicized tragedies, but the positive response to this alleged assailant has been particularly widespread and mainstream: Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked on his show about his producers gushing over the suspect’s looks. Merchandise celebrating the shooter has spread online, and a handful of people gathered in person in New York to hold a lookalike contest. Fundraising pages have popped up for Mangione’s legal defense, and his attorney said he’s received offers to pay his client’s legal bills.

But some went further than simply lauding the killing and venerating the killer. Viral posts on social media before Mangione’s arrest urged people not to share information about his whereabouts or cooperate with law enforcement. Some posted the headshots and names of other health care executives, effectively promoting a hit list; “wanted” posters featuring health care executives appeared in New York City. Health care companies are now moving to increase security for their executives and have taken down public information about and images of their leaders from company websites. After Mangione’s arrest, people review-bombed the McDonald’s where he was apprehended, leaving reviews calling the employees snitches and rats.

But beyond the online cesspool, some lawmakers have taken the opportunity to criticize the health care system. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont labeled the killing “outrageous” and “unacceptable” before going on to blast the insurance industry. “I think what the outpouring of anger at the health care industry tells us is that millions of people understand that health care is a human right and that you cannot have people in the insurance industry rejecting needed health care for people while they make billions of dollars in profit.”

Fellow progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said, “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far.” Warren later clarified her remarks saying, “Violence is never the answer. Period,” and noted, “I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who supports a national single-payer health insurance system, called the shooting “horrific,” saying that his sympathies were with the Thompson family and that “there is no justification for violence.”

“But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me,” he added, highlighting the denial of claims by health insurance companies.

Some pundits and opinion writers were quick to spill their digital ink explaining how Americans’ anger at the country’s health care system is justified and political solutions are failing them. Any discussion of how extreme the rhetoric around health care and insurance has become—or whether a murder might warrant tempering the tenor of the conversation—was largely skipped altogether. But not by all: “My point here is that murder is wrong and everything after the ‘but’ is BS,” Jonah Goldberg argued in Wednesday’s G-File. “I’m not saying that the complaints about health insurance companies in general or UnitedHealth in particular are entirely untrue or unfounded. I’m saying that the conversation people want to have after the but is appalling and grotesque.”

And there were other voices of sanity amid the din. “Some attention in this case, especially online, has been deeply disturbing as some have looked to celebrate instead of condemning this killing,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Monday. “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.”

“I understand people have real frustration with our health care system,” he added. “But I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man, using an illegal ghost gun, to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most.”

Worth Your Time

• WhatsApp, Meta’s messaging app, isn’t widely used in the United States. But elsewhere, it’s dominant. “With over 2 billion users, WhatsApp is not just the most popular messaging app in the world—it’s a digital lifeline,” Sonia Faleiro reported for Rest of World. “Its closest competitors, WeChat (1.3 billion users) and Facebook Messenger (1 billion users), pale in comparison. In many parts of the world, WhatsApp is synonymous with the internet itself. For Nigerian content creators, Brazilian shopkeepers, and Indian aunties, it is often the only app they need. On WhatsApp, you can chat with friends and family, attend school, run a business, catch up on the news, shop, and even bank. Increasingly, it’s where people watch TV, book medical appointments, and arrange dates. … WhatsApp, originally developed as a lightweight tool for sending simple texts to friends, has by now become something infinitely bigger, more complicated, and more surprising. The app has been repurposed and remade by niche communities and for diverse cultural activities in ways that many in the West could never imagine—and in ways that its creators never expected.”

• Chinese Christians are adapting their Advent and Christmas celebrations, Eva Chou reported for Christianity Today. “For Robert Wang, observing Advent is a new Christmas tradition. In the past, his house church would hold large Christmas gatherings with around 60 first-time visitors in attendance,” Chou wrote from Shanghai. “Because the Chinese government passed tighter religious regulations in 2018, the 150-member church has split into several smaller churches, one of which is pastored by Wang. Today, Wang has changed how the congregation celebrates Christmas, not because of government restrictions but out of a desire to better integrate Christmas into the life of the church. Instead focusing on one isolated event, he wants church members to walk through the Advent season and make evangelism part of their weekly rhythm. ‘Through meditative reflection during Advent, learning Christmas hymns, prayer, and worship, the preparation for the season has become the most anticipated and exciting time of the year for our church,’ Wang said. The changes at Wang’s church are happening all over the country.”

Presented Without Comment

Politico: Judge Rejects Sale of Alex Jones’ Infowars to The Onion

Also Presented Without Comment

The Guardian: North Korea Decries ‘Dictatorship’ in South in Wake of Martial Law Attempt

Also Also Presented Without Comment

The Hill: Ohio Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Make ‘Flag Planting’ in Ohio State Stadium a Felony

In the Zeitgeist

Someone was cutting onions near us while we watched this Coldplay music video for the band’s song “All My Love,” featuring 99-year-old entertainer Dick Van Dyke.

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Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick Catoggio zeroed in on (🔒) the two senators from Iowa to explore whether Trump will get his nominees through the Senate, and Jonah Goldberg explained what pardoning Hunter Biden has to do with the handwaving away of Luigi Mangione’s alleged crime.

• On the podcasts: Jonah Goldberg is joined by Razib Khan on The Remnant to explore whether Christopher Columbus was actually Jewish, and Sarah Isgur and David French discuss judicial retirement rumors and marijuana banking on Advisory Opinions.

• On the site: Charlotte Lawson covers what a post-Assad Syria means for Israel and Joseph Roche reports from Ukraine on the Witches of Bucha, a mostly female volunteer unit doing anti-drone warfare.

Let Us Know

What do you make of Jonah’s point that in both Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and the reaction to Brian Thompson’s killing “anger confers no righteousness”?

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