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Read the Criminal Complaint Against Luigi Mangione

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Read the Criminal Complaint Against Luigi Mangione

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
V.
LUIGI NICHOLAS MANGIONE,
Defendant.
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, ss.:
Original
AUSAS: Dominic A. Gentile,
Jun Xiang, Alexandra Messiter
24 MAG 4375
SEALED COMPLAINT
Violations of
18 U.S.C. §§ 2261A, 2261(b), 924(j), and
924(c)
COUNTY OF OFFENSE:
NEW YORK
GARY W. COBB, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he is a Special Agent with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and charges as follows:
COUNT ONE
(Stalking – Travel in Interstate Commerce)
1. From at least in or about November 24, 2024 to in or about December 4, 2024, in
the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, LUIGI NICHOLAS MANGIONE, the
defendant, traveled in interstate commerce with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, and place
under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate another person, and in the
course of, and as a result of, such travel engaged in conduct that placed that person in reasonable
fear of the death of, and serious bodily injury to, that person, and in the course of engaging in such
conduct caused the death of that person, to wit, MANGIONE, traveled from Georgia to New York,
New York for the purpose of stalking and killing Brian Thompson, and while in New York,
MANGIONE stalked and then shot and killed Thompson in the vicinity of West 54th Street and
Sixth Avenue.
(Title 18, United States Code, Sections 2261A(1)(A) and 2261(b)(1).)
COUNT TWO
(Stalking – Use of Interstate Facilities)
2. From at least in or about November 24, 2024 to in or about December 4, 2024, in
the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, LUIGI NICHOLAS MANGIONE, the
defendant, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, and place under surveillance with intent
to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate another person, used an electronic communication service and
electronic communication system of interstate commerce, and a facility of interstate or foreign
commerce, to engage in a course of conduct that placed that person in reasonable fear of the death
of and serious bodily injury to that person, and in the course of engaging in such conduct caused
the death of that person, to wit, MANGIONE used a cellphone, interstate wires, interstate

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Weinstein Accuser Testifies About Coerced Sex for a Second Time

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Weinstein Accuser Testifies About Coerced Sex for a Second Time

Miriam Haley, a former television production assistant, on Tuesday afternoon took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom for a second time to begin recounting how she said Harvey Weinstein overpowered and sexually assaulted her in his apartment nearly 20 years ago.

Ms. Haley said she initially met Mr. Weinstein, then a powerful Hollywood producer, at a film premiere in London in 2004. She has said she reconnected with him years later at the Cannes Film Festival as she was looking for an opportunity as a production assistant in New York.

Defense lawyers carefully listened on Tuesday as Ms. Haley spoke, a transcript of what she said during Mr. Weinstein’s first trial five years ago on hand, waiting to pounce on any differences in her retelling.

Ms. Haley’s testimony was one of the most highly anticipated and closely watched moments of Mr. Weinstein’s retrial, which began this month.

In 2020, Mr. Weinstein was convicted in New York of rape and a criminal sexual act based on the complaints of two women, one of them Ms. Haley. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but his conviction was overturned last year and a new trial was ordered. In the interim, prosecutors added a new indictment.

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On Tuesday, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, watched as Ms. Haley testified. She was not the first witness to testify for a second time. Ms. Haley’s former roommate told jurors last week about how a “very shaken and distraught and frightened” Ms. Haley hovered around her bedroom door while telling her that Mr. Weinstein had “forcibly put his mouth on her vagina without her consent.”

“I said, ‘Miriam, that sounds like rape,’” the woman, Elizabeth Entin, told the jurors. “‘I think you should call a lawyer.’”

As Ms. Haley began her testimony, a prosecutor, Nicole Blumberg, asked her to identify Mr. Weinstein. In response, she pointed to Mr. Weinstein sitting at the defense table. As she pointed, Mr. Weinstein, facing her with his arm over the back of his wheelchair, looked down at his left lapel.

Ms. Haley began telling her story publicly before the initial trial five years ago. Her accusations surfaced at the dawn of the #MeToo movement, as dozens of women came forward to recount what they said was Mr. Weinstein’s pattern of using his power to coerce women in Hollywood into sexual encounters, propelling the movement and his downfall.

Mr. Weinstein was known throughout his decades-long reign as a producer who could make careers. He was behind award-winning movies like “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting,” as well as the reality show “Project Runway,” where Ms. Haley worked briefly as a production assistant.

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Mr. Weinstein is also charged with raping Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress who said Mr. Weinstein attacked her in 2013, and Kaja Sokola, a model whom prosecutors say he assaulted in a Manhattan hotel in 2006.

Mr. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have said that his interactions with all of the women were consensual.

The producer offered his victims scripts and the promise of fame, Shannon Lucey, an assistant district attorney, said in her opening statements — and he “used those dream opportunities as weapons.”

In their opening statements to the jury, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers said that the women whom prosecutors called victims had entered consensual relationships, because Mr. Weinstein had the key to the doors of fame. Arthur L. Aidala, a defense lawyer, told the jurors that he would help them “watch the whole movie.”

The specifics of the encounters between Ms. Haley and Mr. Weinstein have been laid out in her previous testimony and in prosecutors’ statements.

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Ms. Haley, who was raised in Sweden, met Mr. Weinstein at a movie premiere in London in 2004. About two years later, as she was looking for a new position, she saw him at Cannes and asked him if there were any opportunities at the Weinstein Company, his production firm in New York.

While in France, Mr. Weinstein invited her to a hotel for what Ms. Haley believed was a business meeting, she has said. There he commented on her legs, she said, and asked her for a massage.

On Tuesday, Ms. Haley said the interaction had made her feel embarrassed. As she left the hotel, she said, she burst into tears.

“I felt taken aback, I felt humiliated,” she told the jury. “It was a sinking feeling, realizing that he wasn’t taking me seriously at all.”

After Ms. Haley got her post working on “Project Runway,” which was produced by Mr. Weinstein’s company, his advances continued, she has said. She said she had worked on the tail end of a season, about two to three weeks, and had been paid in cash. She did not have authorization to work in the United States, which Mr. Weinstein knew and used against her, according to prosecutors.

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Throughout the summer of 2006, as Ms. Haley worked for his company, Mr. Weinstein tried to “elevate” their relationship, Ms. Lucey said, even showing up unannounced on one occasion and aggressively making his way into her apartment to demand that she travel with him to Paris.

Ms. Haley refused, she said on Tuesday, eventually telling him, “I heard about your reputation with women,” in an attempt to get him to leave. Mr. Weinstein departed, she said, seeming “offended” and upset.

After these episodes, Ms. Haley still agreed to travel to a film premiere in Los Angeles. On the day in July 2006 that Mr. Weinstein bought her ticket, he invited her to his apartment in Lower Manhattan, she said.

There, after offering her a drink, he lunged at her, holding her down and pushing her until she fell backward onto a bed, she said. Ms. Haley recalled that she was on her period, which she told Mr. Weinstein, but he pulled the tampon from her body and put his mouth on her genitals.

Ms. Haley’s testimony was scheduled to continue on Wednesday morning.

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A Lawmaker Blasted a Hospital’s Super Bowl Ad. Then He Changed His Tune.

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A Lawmaker Blasted a Hospital’s Super Bowl Ad. Then He Changed His Tune.

The 30-second television advertisement showed star doctors from a top-notch Manhattan hospital clumsily playing football. From the sidelines, a former standout player for the Giants suggested they should stick to medicine.

The ad promoting NYU Langone Health probably did not rank among this year’s most memorable Super Bowl commercials. But it sure bothered one viewer: a North Carolina congressman.

The lawmaker promptly sent NYU Langone’s chief executive a stern letter, noting that the hospital benefits from federal funds.

“I write today with questions about your stewardship of this money, including our serious concern about your decision to purchase a 30-second advertisement — estimated to cost $8 million — during Super Bowl LIX,” Representative Greg Murphy, a Republican, wrote on Feb. 11. The letter contained a list of pointed questions about NYU Langone’s finances. It is the sort of missive that congressional offices routinely write to gather information for lawmaking or hearings.

NYU Langone is hardly the only New York hospital to spend money on a national advertising campaign, although a Super Bowl ad is unusual. Those commercials speak to the intense competition among the country’s elite medical centers. The congressman’s reaction illustrates that with the promise of being in the spotlight comes peril.

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But, it turns out, opinions can change. Eight days after he first contacted the hospital, Representative Murphy wrote a follow-up letter. And that letter could not have been more different. The congressman had gone from critic to booster.

The second letter expressed enthusiastic admiration for NYU Langone’s “world class patient outcomes” and “superb” metrics — such as fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays. “America would be much healthier if all hospitals could report these excellent numbers,” he wrote.

Representative Murphy’s letter stated that he had been left “all-the-more impressed” after recently speaking with NYU Langone’s chief executive, Dr. Robert Grossman. The letter does not indicate whether Dr. Grossman and the congressman had a phone call or met in person.

But just two days before Representative Murphy sent his second letter, a private jet had landed at the sleepy airport in Greenville, N.C., the state’s 12th-largest city, where Representative Murphy lives.

The Bombardier Global 5000 was registered to Invemed Securities, the parent company of Invemed Associates, the investment firm founded by Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire benefactor of NYU Langone and the chairman of the hospital’s board of directors. Mr. Langone, who is best known for cofounding Home Depot, has given hundreds of millions of dollars to NYU’s hospital system. In return, his name appears on the hospital. And Mr. Langone’s largess allows for free tuition at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

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He is also a major Republican donor, contributing more than $500,000 since 2020 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives. He has donated millions more to other Republican organizations, such as the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC. Records do not show campaign donations from Mr. Langone to Representative Murphy; there can be delays in reporting contributions.

It is not clear who was on the plane.

A spokesman for NYU Langone, Steve Ritea, declined to answer questions about the hospital’s interactions with the congressman or his staff members. Mr. Ritea also declined to say whether Dr. Grossman, the hospital CEO, flew to see Representative Murphy. Mr. Langone did not respond to requests for comment.

Representative Murphy’s office also declined repeated interview requests on the topic. But his spokesman acknowledged that it might seem “a little confusing” that the tone in Representative Murphy’s letters to Dr. Grossman went from critical to admiring. His spokesman would not share any information about material Dr. Grossman provided or what led the congressman to turn so quickly from critic to booster.

“I don’t have much to add,” the spokesman for the congressman, Alexander Crane, said. “I’d certainly understand that, you know, from A to B to C might seem a little confusing, but basically they had a wonderful private conversation.”

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Representative Murphy is a urologist who still regularly treats patients in Greenville. Another doctor at the same office where the congressman sees patients, Dr. Jonathan Hamilton, said he did not know if Mr. Langone or Dr. Grossman came to Greenville to visit Representative Murphy. The incoming chairman of the county’s Republican Party said he hadn’t heard of any such visit either.

The operations manager for the Pitt-Greenville Airport Authority, John Hanna, confirmed that an aircraft with a tail number matching Mr. Langone’s private jet was “here for a short duration.” Flight records, accessible through FlightAware.com, a company that tracks flight information, place that private jet on the ground at Pitt-Greenville Airport for more than two hours on the afternoon of Feb. 17, Presidents’ Day. The plane had flown in from Boca Raton, Fla., and returned there afterward. It appears to have been the only time this year the plane went to Greenville.

Two days later, Representative Murphy released a statement along with his second letter.

“I was left impressed and grateful for the work the institution is doing,” he said.

Representative Murphy’s first letter, on Feb. 11, had posed questions that went beyond how much the Super Bowl ad had cost and how NYU Langone had paid for it. The congressman also asked about the hospital’s overseas investments and why it had sought a “rural” designation that would have increased the subsidies it received. NYU Langone is on Manhattan’s East Side, on land that hasn’t been rural for two centuries.

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The letter sought information on whether the health system was exploiting legal loopholes to maximize profit.

In his follow-up letter, on Feb. 19, Representative Murphy wrote that he considered all his “questions thoroughly answered.”

But his office has declined to provide those answers to the public.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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Brad Lander’s 2 Goals in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race: Beat Cuomo and Win

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Brad Lander’s 2 Goals in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race: Beat Cuomo and Win

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and self-described “tough nerd,” knows that for him to win the race for mayor of New York City, Andrew M. Cuomo must fall.

To make that more likely, Mr. Lander decided that his campaign strategy needed an overhaul. He would no longer focus his ire on the increasingly inconsequential mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, and his apparent alliance with the Trump administration.

Instead, Mr. Lander, the Park Slope father with the University of Chicago degree, would use his distinctive voice — a singsong lilt that his critics find grating — to try to take down Mr. Cuomo, the former governor leading in the polls.

During a Passover week meal of latkes and matzo ball soup at a restaurant on Montague Street in Brooklyn, Mr. Lander unspooled his indictment of Mr. Cuomo, allegation by allegation.

“I know he looks like a good leader, but actually, you know, he’s just a corrupt chaos agent with an abusive personality that has shown through in every position he’s been in, and that’s dangerous for New York City,” Mr. Lander said, stopping only to spread sour cream and apple sauce on his potato pancake, or to sip from his French 75, a cocktail he likes because it is fizzy.

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New Yorkers, he said, deserved a stark alternative: “I am a decent person. Let’s just start there.”

In eight weeks, Democratic primary voters will choose a candidate for mayor, with the victor promptly becoming the favorite to win the November general election in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one.

What kind of person New Yorkers want as their mayor is the elemental question of this and any mayor’s race. Do they want someone who projects a muscle-car style of masculinity, like the former governor, who resigned in disgrace in 2021 after an investigation found he had sexually harassed 11 women? (Mr. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.)

Would they rather a female politician adept at projecting an even-tempered self-confidence, like the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams? Would they prefer a charismatic democratic socialist and son of a movie director from Queens with an age-appropriate aptitude for social media, like Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is now polling in second place?

Or would they like Mr. Lander, an earnest-seeming policy wonk who read Antigone in the original Greek; a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America who in 2020 said he still considered himself a member, but whose spokeswoman now says hasn’t attended a D.S.A. meeting in decades; a critic of the city-backed financing of the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s West Side who has since come around; a reform Jew who considered becoming a rabbi, and who is also an anti-occupation Netanyahu critic who cursed Mr. Cuomo in Yiddish as he accused him of wielding antisemitism as a political weapon?

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At the moment, it appears that New York City voters are looking elsewhere. Mr. Lander is polling at 6 percent among registered Democratic voters, well behind Mr. Mamdani, a liberal upstart who has energized much of Mr. Lander’s presumptive base. Twenty percent of voters remain undecided. Mayor Adams has opted out of the Democratic primary and will run as an independent in November instead.

Lander partisans note that it is early. At this point in 2021, Andrew Yang was still leading the polls, Mr. Adams was in second place, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer, and Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, were polling at 7 and 4 percent, according to a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll from the time.

That June, Ms. Garcia lost to Mr. Adams by just 7,000 votes, Ms. Wiley finished third, and Mr. Yang finished fourth. And Mr. Lander won the Democratic primary for comptroller.

“What I did last time to win was build a coalition that had the Maya Wiley voters, like people that have a more progressive vision of a city that can deliver on affordability, and Kathryn Garcia voters, who just want a good manager who loves New York City,” Mr. Lander said.

“And I believe that coalition still exists and can be a majority of the Democratic primary electorate.”

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But first, Mr. Lander said, Mr. Cuomo has to be “knocked down.”

To that end, Mr. Lander has bombarded the press with anti-Cuomo messaging, hoping that something, anything, will stick.

“Lander Demands Cuomo Release His Tax Returns After History of Shady Business and Lies About His Income,” read one news release. “In Addition to Shady Crypto Client, Who Else Has Cuomo Been Paid to Advise Since Resigning as Governor?” read another.

Mr. Lander’s first real political encounter with Mr. Cuomo happened in 2017, when Mr. Lander was the city councilman representing Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Mr. Cuomo was still governor.

Mr. Cuomo effectively killed a New York City law imposing a 5-cent fee on plastic bags that Mr. Lander had sponsored, acting right before it was set to begin. “Plastic bags won,” Mr. Lander said at the time.

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Four years after Mr. Lander’s bill passed the City Council, a plastic bag ban signed by Mr. Cuomo went into effect.

“We call that 40 billion plastic bags later,” Mr. Lander said.

More damning, Mr. Lander argues, were the Cuomo administration’s choices during the height of the Covid pandemic, when it directed nursing homes to accept infected patients, and then failed to publicly account for the deaths of more than 4,000 nursing home residents, according to an audit by the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli.

Mr. Lander has also tried to highlight the estimated $61 million New York has spent on legal representation related to issues surrounding Mr. Cuomo’s tenure.

“In every relationship, he views it as like, how could I manipulate this other party to my benefit?” Mr. Lander said. “And I really think that’s how he thinks about New York City.”

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And so, inevitably, more than an hour into a pro-migrant, pro-trans-rights, pro-Mr. Lander event at a Unitarian church in Brooklyn Heights, Mr. Lander turned to Mr. Cuomo.

He pinned Mr. Cuomo’s polling status on “name recognition in a time of Trumpian distraction” and “pandemic memory repression.” He invoked a former Syracuse mayor, Stephanie Miner, who recently described Mr. Cuomo’s kissing her against her will as a power play. He brought up Covid and the $5 million book deal on which Mr. Cuomo used government resources. He noted that Mr. Cuomo’s lawyer had sought the gynecological records of a woman who had accused him of harassment.

“This is an abusive, corrupt person who is running for his own revenge tour,” Mr. Lander said. “He is not looking to solve the problems of New York City, where he hasn’t lived in 25 years.”

Then Mr. Lander asked the room to sing “Happy Birthday” to his 81-year-old mother, whose celebration he was missing while on the campaign trail. The audience happily complied.

In a statement, Esther Jensen, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, described Mr. Lander’s strategy as “bizarre.”

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“New Yorkers aren’t naïve,” she said. “They know Governor Cuomo is the only person in this race with the proven record of accomplishment, and leadership necessary to effectively confront the very serious challenges we face, and take on President Trump, which is why these repeated gutter attacks from Brad Lander, a career politician, with no meaningful record or vision of his own, are not only not working, but backfiring.”

Mr. Lander, the 55-year-old son of a St. Louis lawyer and guidance counselor, met his wife at the University of Chicago and moved to New York City in 1992, so she could attend N.Y.U. law school. He found work running a community development corporation and then the Pratt Center for Community Development, both in Brooklyn.

After Mr. Lander announced he would run for mayor, he began tacking toward the center, renouncing the defund the police movement he had once supported and giving a pro-growth speech at a prominent civic association.

The speech won the respect of Dan Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor under Michael R. Bloomberg and a driving force behind New York City’s economic development. “The most important thing is he’s adopted my vision of the pro-growth cycle,” Mr. Doctoroff said of Mr. Lander.

It was a strategy seemingly predicated on the idea that moderates seeking competent governance would coalesce with left-leaning voters behind Mr. Lander.

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He has cast himself as a liberal with managerial chops, and a housing expert who promises to end the mental health crisis on city streets and to build apartments on public golf courses. But the left seems more enamored of Mr. Mamdani these days.

In this city of shifting political loyalties, the pendulum may still swing in unexpected ways.

At this point in 2021, Ms. Garcia, who was running on her managerial competence, was a political afterthought. Then she surged forward, winning the endorsements of The New York Times and The Daily News.

Many voters still “want someone who is going to be a good manager,” said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who formerly led the state party. He added that voters were also looking for someone who could stand up to Mr. Trump.

“Brad Lander has a chance if he can make the case that he can do all of those things,” Mr. Smikle said.

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