DOJ Defends Posts Amplifying Trump Claim That Mangione Is Guilty

The Justice Department said it didn’t violate court rules when staffers posted a clip to their X accounts showing President Donald Trump saying Luigi Mangione “shot someone in the back.”

The social media posts aren’t improper because they came from DOJ employees not involved in the Mangione case, Manhattan deputy US Attorney Sean S. Buckley said Wednesday in a letter to the judge.

Mangione’s lawyers said the people who posted the comments were the DOJ’s deputy director of public affairs, Chad Gilmartin III, and Associate Deputy Attorney General Brian Nieves. Gilmartin wrote “he’s absolutely right” above the clip of Trump, the lawyers said.

Those employees “operate entirely outside the scope of the prosecution team,” Buckley wrote in the response Wednesday.

The government’s defense comes after a federal judge threatened prosecutors with sanctions over the posts. Judge Margaret Garnett, of the Southern District of New York, said last month that the statements appeared to violate both court rules and the judge’s own orders for prosecutors not to publicly opine on the high-profile case in prejudicial ways.

The issue could impact how the case proceeds in federal court, with Mangione asking the court to toss the case or bar the government from executing him.

He’s argued in part that government officials have prejudiced prospective jurors through repeated public remarks and failed to follow protocol for death penalty cases. US Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this year that the government is seeking the death penalty against Mangione, who is accused of murdering a UnitedHealth Group executive.

The government also argued Wednesday that the challenged social media posts wouldn’t prejudice potential jurors in a trial against Mangione regardless. “The defense has not identified any presumed or actual prejudice flowing from the social media reposts,” Buckley wrote.

Buckley also questioned if the posts constitute the poster’s own statements, given that they were “reposts” of other accounts.

In addition to challenging the DOJ’s X posts, Mangione has argued that comments on the case by Trump himself and other government officials, including White House aides Stephen Miller and Karoline Leavitt, are improperly prejudicial. Prosecutors didn’t address those arguments in their letter to the judge on Wednesday.

In addition to the federal case, Mangione is facing murder charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, with the potential for a life sentence.

Mangione is represented by Agnifilo Intrater.

The case is United States v. Mangione, S.D.N.Y., 10/8/25.