Society · Press & Power · May 18, 2026

Share

The Mayor’s Office Gave Three Mangione Fans NYC Press Credentials. Then Said It Never Should Have Happened.

On May 18, 2026, three women appeared outside Luigi Mangione’s Manhattan pretrial hearing wearing official New York City press credentials. The credentials were issued by the office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY). The three women — Lena Weissbrot, Ashley Rojas, and Abril Rios — do not work for traditional news organizations. They describe themselves online as “Mangionistas,” a courtroom-fan cohort built around the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The New York Post’s Kirsten Fleming documented the scene on the record. Asked by the Post about Mr. Thompson — the deceased father of two who was shot outside the Hilton Midtown on Dec. 4, 2024 — Ms. Weissbrot said he was “responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden.” Ms. Rojas said she did not “give a flying f—k he died.” Mangione’s own defense attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, publicly disavowed the three.

Asked about the credentials, Mayor Mamdani — the freshman Democratic mayor sworn in January 1, 2026 — said the passes “should not have been given.” The civic problem isn’t the three opinions. It’s that the institution — press credentialing, designed to identify accountable journalists at a Manhattan murder hearing — lowered its standard until “Mangionista Merch” Instagram operators cleared the bar. Mr. Mangione, for the record, has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent until verdict.

• 3press passesNYC-issued · Mayor Mamdani's (D) office · revoked after NY Post reporting
• $110Bmarket capshort-term loss at UnitedHealth Group since Dec 4, 2024
• $61MCEO payStephen Hemsley's return package, May 2025
• 1 in 7claimsindustry-wide health-insurance claim-denial rate (ProPublica / KFF)
• Sept 8, 2026state trialManhattan; Oct 26 SDNY federal opening statements

The hallway outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street is a working press space. On most mornings it is occupied by Reuters, the Associated Press, NY1, PIX11, the Post’s court reporters, and a rotating cast of national stringers. On the morning of May 18, 2026, it was also occupied by three young women in matching merchandise who described themselves to the New York Post as “Mangionistas.”

They are, by name and on the record: Lena Weissbrot, Ashley Rojas, and Abril Rios. All three were photographed wearing physical NYC-issued press credentials hanging from lanyards. The Post’s Kirsten Fleming filed the story under the headline “Luigi Mangione’s Bloodthirsty Superfans Given NYC Press Passes.”

Ms. Rojas, asked about Mr. Thompson, said on the record:

“I'm standing on business, f—k Brian Thompson. I don't give a flying f—k he died.”

Ashley Rojas to the New York Post · outside 100 Centre St. · May 18, 2026

Ms. Weissbrot went further. Asked about the murdered CEO — a married father of two whose children are now growing up without him — she compared him unfavorably to the founder of al-Qaeda:

“He's responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden, and I remember Americans celebrating when Osama bin Laden was killed.”

Lena Weissbrot to the New York Post · May 18, 2026

Asked specifically about Mr. Thompson’s two surviving sons, Weissbrot told the reporter the boys “are better off without him.” The Thompson sons are both school-age. Their father was killed at 7:00 a.m. outside the Hilton Midtown at 1335 Sixth Avenue while walking to a UnitedHealth investor day. There is no public allegation that Mr. Thompson, the deceased, committed any crime.

New York City press credentials are issued under the authority of the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment. The form requires applicants to demonstrate that they cover newsworthy events of public interest on behalf of an organization that disseminates news to the public on a regular basis. Credentialed journalists clear security lines at City Hall, the NYPD, and at the courthouses where high-profile cases — like a CEO assassination — are tried.

Three of those credentials, on May 18, 2026, were on lanyards around the necks of women whose combined social-media followings are in the low thousands and whose principal published output around the case is courtroom merchandise and reaction content. Asked about how that happened, Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY)— sworn in January 1, 2026 — agreed publicly that the credentials should not have been issued:

“They should not have been given press passes for court.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) · public comment carried by New York Post · May 18, 2026

Mr. Mangione’s lead defense attorney is Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former Manhattan prosecutor and CNN legal analyst. Friedman Agnifilo has not built a public defense around fan support — she has built it around evidentiary challenges, the dismissed terrorism-enhancement counts, and the federal death-penalty question (resolved against the death penalty on Jan. 30, 2026). Asked specifically about the Mangionistas, Friedman Agnifilo distanced her client:

“These individuals do not represent the views of Luigi, nor the tens of thousands who have shown their support from around the world.”

Karen Friedman Agnifilo · Mangione defense attorney · statement to NY Post · May 18, 2026

Friedman Agnifilo’s “tens of thousands” reference points to a sympathy infrastructure that built around the case in the weeks after the Dec. 9, 2024 arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania: a defense legal fund that briefly trended on GoFundMe before being removed for terms-of-service reasons; fan accounts; merchandise. Her statement makes two editorial choices worth flagging. First, she does not deny that the fan base exists. Second, she draws a hard line: the three women outside the courthouse, in NYC-issued press passes, do not speak for the defendant.

Mr. Mangione faces two parallel prosecutions. In New York state court, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) charged him with second-degree murder and eight weapons counts. The Article 490 terrorism-enhancement counts — the most legally novel piece of the state case — were dismissed by the state judge in September 2025 as “legally insufficient.” State trial is currently set for September 8, 2026.

In federal court for the Southern District of New York, the U.S. Attorney’s Office — led in this administration by interim U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, the former SEC chair — has charged Mr. Mangione with interstate stalking and murder using a firearm equipped with a suppressor. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi directed SDNY in April 2025 to seek the death penalty. A federal judge ruled on January 30, 2026 that the death penalty was not available. Federal jury selection is scheduled to begin October 5, 2026, with opening statements October 26, 2026.

Separately, on the same morning the Mangionistas appeared at the courthouse, the state judge issued an evidentiary ruling: certain backpack evidence was blocked from the Manhattan murder trial; a separate ruling permitted the gun and the notebook found at the time of the Altoona arrest. The cartridge cases recovered at the Midtown crime scene reportedly bore the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” — language drawn, prosecutors allege in the public criminal complaint, from criticism of insurance-industry claim-denial practices. Mr. Mangione, again, has pleaded not guilty.

The corporate fallout is its own civic data point. UnitedHealth Group — the parent of UnitedHealthcare and Optum — lost an estimated $110 billion in short-term market capitalization in the weeks after the Dec. 4, 2024 killing. By spring 2025, with Q1 earnings missing on care costs and CEO Andrew Wittystepping down (May 13, 2025) for what the company called “personal reasons,” UNH’s market value had fallen further; the managed-care cohort — CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Humana — shed roughly 19 to 25 percent over the same window.

Stephen Hemsley, who had previously led the company through its growth decade, returned as CEO on May 13, 2025, with a disclosed return package valued at $61 million. Heather Cianfrocco moved from CEO of Optum into an Executive Vice President role for governance and compliance at the parent. On May 6, 2026 — the same week as the Mangionistas episode — Patrick Conway, MD, formerly the CEO of Optum Rx, was named Optum’s new CEO. UnitedHealth’s Q1 2026 reporting put quarterly revenue at $111.7 billion, up 2% year-over-year, with adjusted earnings of $7.23 per share.

None of that is exculpatory, and none of it is the point. The market did not punish UnitedHealth because investors believed Mr. Mangione’s alleged claim — the language on the cartridge cases. It punished UnitedHealth because the killing dramatized, in the worst conceivable way, an industry-wide question that the data already raised: how often health insurers deny claims, and whether that practice is producing the political reaction it now appears to be producing. ProPublica and the Kaiser Family Foundation have together documented that insurers reject roughly one in seven claims overall, with ACA marketplace plan denial rates varying from 2% to 49% depending on carrier and plan year.

Brian Thompsonbecame CEO of UnitedHealthcare — the insurance subsidiary — in April 2021. He had spent two decades at the company in finance and operating roles. He was 50 years old at the time of his death. He lived in Minnesota with his wife Paulette and their two sons. He had no public criminal record. He was, by every available account, a career operating executive at a Fortune 10 company doing the job for which his board had hired him.

The Weissbrot bin-Laden comparison is, to put it factually, not a comparison the documentary record supports. It is also not a comparison Mr. Thompson’s family or surviving sons have any procedural recourse against. The decision by the New York Post to publish those comments verbatim is editorially defensible — the women said the words, in public, to a reporter, while holding city-issued press credentials. Whether the same courtroom-fan cohort would have said the same words without the credentials is unknowable. They said them with the credentials.

One reason this case is reported on the way it is reported is the underlying industry context. According to ProPublica and the Kaiser Family Foundation, U.S. private health insurers reject roughly 1 in 7claims submitted to them. On the Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, in-network denial rates have ranged in published data from as low as 2% to as high as 49% — per carrier, per plan year. UnitedHealthcare, the largest single insurer in the country by membership, has been the subject of multiple investigative pieces examining its automated claim-denial systems and the rate at which its denials are overturned on appeal.

None of that data is a defense of a homicide. It is the policy backdrop against which a homicide produced a defendant fan-base measurable in the “tens of thousands,” per Mangione’s own attorney. A separate civic question — one this page does not pretend to settle — is whether the country’s elected legislators will engage that denial-rate data through statute, regulator action, and oversight, or whether the political class will let the policy question be debated by the prosecutors of a murder trial. The first path is harder. It is also the only path that does not leave the policy fight in the hands of people prepared to celebrate a killing.

One detail that has not always traveled with the case: the defendant’s own family operates a healthcare business. The Maryland Mangiones own Lorien Health Services, a chain of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities operating across Maryland for several decades. The defendant’s cousin, Nino Mangione (R), sits in the Maryland House of Delegates. There is no public allegation of wrongdoing involving the family business, and Nino Mangione has publicly distanced himself from the criminal case. We note the fact only because public commentary on the killing has at times framed it as “the people” versus “the industry” — a frame the defendant’s own family business complicates.

The Mangione case has been one of the most-discussed crime stories of the decade. The May 18 Mangionistas episode revived the conversation specifically around the question of public sympathy for an accused murder defendant and the institutions that have, by accident or design, helped amplify that sympathy. A sampling of the public discussion:

Editorial framing: the Mangionistas episode is what cultural rot looks like when a city’s own mayor’s office hands accused-killer fans the same press credential it gives Reuters. Three women with combined social-media followings in the low thousands turned a Manhattan courthouse hallway into a content set, told reporters the murdered father of two “was responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden,” and were waved past security by the office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) — who, asked about it later, agreed the passes never should have been issued.

The deeper civic problem isn’t that three people have ugly opinions. It’s that an institutional gatekeeper — press credentialing, designed to identify accountable journalists — was so thinly enforced that “Mangionista Merch” Instagram operators cleared the bar. Layer on a $110 billion market-cap hole, a returning CEO collecting $61 million, an industry still denying roughly one in seven claims, and a defendant’s own family that owns a Maryland nursing-home chain, and the story stops being about a fan club and starts being about every institution — the insurer, the platform, the merch market, the mayor’s press office — that handled this case by lowering a standard rather than holding one.