Man Impersonates Federal Officer, Tries To Free Luigi Mangione 

On Wednesday, a man tried to take the phrase “Free Luigi” a little too literally by posing as a federal agent to try to break Luigi Mangione out of jail. 

According to NPR, 36-year-old Minnesota native Mark Anderson was arrested for impersonating a federal officer in his failed attempt to free Mangione from the Metropolitan Detention Center. A criminal complaint says Anderson arrived at the jail around 6:50 p.m. on Wednesday and told uniformed officers that he had paperwork “signed by a judge” authorizing Mangione’s release. When they asked Anderson to show his federal credentials, he revealed a Minnesota driver’s license before throwing the documents at the officers and telling them he had weapons. 

The complaint adds that when an FBI agent took a closer look at the documents, they appeared to be related to filing claims against the Justice Department. A search of Anderson’s bag revealed that his “weapons” were a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter. 

Anderson has a documented history of legal and mental health troubles. He has a history of filing handwritten lawsuits and acting as his own attorney in cases against the Pentagon, Chinese and Russian ambassadors, and a Minnesota police department, all of which were thrown out in court. Public records also reveal that Anderson has been subject to several drug and alcohol related arrests and convictions. 

In a lawsuit filed against a home shelter over alleged injuries that came from a fall, Anderson said he had “multiple disabilities” and that the Social Security Administration ruled him to be “fully disabled because of mental illness.” Anderson appeared in court on Thursday, where he was not asked to make a plea. A judge ordered him to be held without bail, and now he, too, is jailed in the Metropolitan Detention Center. 

Luigi Mangione is currently awaiting his state and federal murder trials over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The New York Times reports that Margaret Garnett of the Federal District Court ruled on Friday that the federal government would not be able to seek the death penalty against Mangione. 

While former President Joe Biden placed a moratorium on the death penalty for most federal offenders in 2021, the Trump administration has been actively trying to revive it. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty in Mangione’s case, which his lawyers argued was “explicitly and unapologetically political.” 

NBC News reports that Garnett found that two of the charges against Mangione, murder through use of a firearm, which carries a maximum death sentence, and a firearms offense, didn’t rise to the legal definition of the crime and threw them out. The judge also ruled that the backpack Mangione had on his person at the time of his arrest in December 2024 can be used as evidence at trial. 

“The analysis contained in the balance of this opinion may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law,” Garnett wrote in her ruling. “But it represents the Court’s committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case,

“The law must be the Court’s only concern,” Garnett added.

Luigi Mangione still faces several charges in both his state and federal cases, including second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life without parole. 

SEE ALSO:

Luigi Mangione: 1st-Degree Murder, State Terrorism Charges Dismissed

Luigi Mangione Pretrial Hearing Set To Resume This Week After Illness