Trump's Justice Department, through Attorney General Pam Bondi, announced earlier in the month that it will seek the death penalty against Mangione, in Bondi's words, 'as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.' In his motion to take the death penalty off the table, Mangione's lawyers say Bondi's direction to Manhattan prosecutors — 'issued publicly, as a press release' — to seek a death sentence for him 'is political, arbitrary, capricious, a breach of established death penalty protocol and has now indelibly prejudiced this process.'
