No evidence Luigi Mangione published viral, deleted Substack article

Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged with murder in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s Dec. 4 shooting death, left a handwritten document explaining his motivation, New York City police officials said.

Police hadn’t released the document to the public as of Dec. 10. But some X users were sharing what they said was a manifesto Mangione published on Substack, a subscription-based platform for online content creators.

“This is allegedly Luigi’s manifesto,” a Dec. 9 X post with more than 5 million views said. The post shared four screenshots of text from a Substack post with the headline, “The Allopathic Complex and Its Consequences” and the subhead “luigi mangione’s last words.”

The Substack article was dated Dec. 9, the same day Mangione was arrested at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s. “The second amendment means I am my own chief executive and commander in chief of my own military,” it said. “I authorize my own act of self-defense in response to a hostile entity making war on me and my family.”

The article quotes Mangione as taking aim at corporate America: “People are dying. Evil has become institutionalized. Corporations make billions of dollars off the pain, suffering, death, and anguished cries in the night of millions of Americans.”

We found other social media posts sharing the same images or language of the blog post and saying Mangione had written them.

But he didn’t write them. Substack removed the post “for violating Substack’s Content Guidelines, which prohibit impersonation,” a company spokesperson told PolitiFact in an emailed statement.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Dec. 9 that police found a handwritten document when they arrested Mangione “that speaks to both his motivation and mindset.” As of Dec. 10, authorities had not offered more information about its contents.

The New York Times reported on the three-page document, citing an internal police report it obtained. Mangione described the act as a “symbolic takedown” of the health care industry, citing “alleged corruption and ‘power games.’”  

None of that language appeared in the Substack post being shared online as Mangione’s manifesto.

PolitiFact reviewed reports about the document by The New York Times, CNN, New York Post or ABC News, all outlets that said they had reviewed the message or had it described to them by law enforcement sources. None of the reports included mention of the Second Amendment. PolitiFact has not obtained a copy.

We rate claims that Mangione wrote the Substack article False.

UPDATE, Dec. 11: We updated this story with another excerpt from the Substack post.