Unverified Luigi Mangione Substack ‘Manifesto’ Shared Online—What We Know

An unverified blog post described as Luigi Mangione’s online “manifesto” has spread widely on social media, even though it appeared to have been created after his arrest in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

A Substack post called “The Allopathic Complex and Its Consequences” went online on Monday evening after Mangione, 26, was detained at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

The post tells the story of the author’s mother suffering from “severe neuropathy”, the cost of her treatment, and the limits, it alleges, of UnitedHealthcare’s coverage. It also mentions the author’s back pain, which Mangione also reportedly suffered.

Mangione was initially arrested on weapons charges after police found him carrying a gun, a fake ID from New Jersey with the same identification as the suspect used to check into a New York hostel, and identification with his real name.

In addition to the gun and fake identification, police also found a three-page handwritten note on Mangione in which he appeared to express “ill will toward corporate America,” Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives at the New York City Police Department, said at a news conference Monday.

By Monday evening, prosecutors in Manhattan had added a murder charge, and he is expected to be extradited to New York.

Despite Mangione’s arrest and charges being a matter of public knowledge, the Substack went live on Monday evening, with a Wayback Machine record showing that it had been “launched” for two hours as of 9:43 pm ET. Page data suggests the post was published at around 6:06 pm ET.

However, Mangione was arrested on Monday morning as per New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s statement the same day. Although Substack posts can be scheduled to be published at a set time, the timeline leading to Mangione’s arrest suggests he may have had little opportunity to write a post, not least of all the counterintuitive move of publishing digital content that could help trace his identity and location.

The Substack post also does not include the line “These parasites had it coming.” Multiple outlets have reported that line was in a handwritten manifesto recovered from Mangione’s person during his arrest, citing law enforcement sources.
In a statement, Substack appeared to confirm to Newsweek that the article in question was not published by Mangione.

“We’ve removed this post for violating Substack’s Content Guidelines, which prohibit impersonation,” the company said.

While the post may have been copied from another site, searches for unique words and phrases from the article return no results. It is no longer online and can only be accessed through archives.

Newsweek has contacted a media representative for Substack via email for comment.

Furthermore, the information was not recovered by journalists or authorities, who were able to quickly uncover Mangione’s apparent social media profiles including his Goodreads, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts. Instead, it initially appeared to circulate on the notorious online forum 4Chan, which regularly shares misleading and false claims about major news stories.

It was also shared on Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and multiple other public message boards.

A post by X user quadcarl_carl, posted on December 9, 2024, viewed 137,000 times, included a screengrab of the post, adding “Luigi Mangione left a manifesto. He was clearly upset with his mother’s pain and suffering and how the insurance company made everything worse.”

Although the post gives seemingly specific details about neuropathy treatment, the rest includes information that appears to have been gleaned from Mangione’s social media profiles, such as his apparent fondness for the cartoon character “Breloom” from the Pokemon video game series. Elsewhere, his back pain is described as “chronic” but with no granular or detailed clinical explanation.

With Mangione in custody and few details forthcoming from his family, little else can be done to verify the blog’s authenticity. Nonetheless, given the chronology of events, the timing of the blog’s publication, and the forums where it was shared, there is little reason yet to believe it was created by Mangione or taken from another source he contributed to.

Newsweek has contacted a media representative for the NYPD and UnitedHealthcare via email for comment.

After Luigi Mangione’s arrest on Monday, Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione, his cousin, posted a statement from the family on social media.

“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione. We only know what we have read in the media,” the family said.

The statement continued: “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news.”