The rhetoric on social media following the assassination of health care CEO Brian Thompson in New York earlier this month was “extraordinarily alarming,” says U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
“It shows what’s really brewing here in this country, and unfortunately we’re seeing that manifest itself in the violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
Some on social media celebrated Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting Mr. Thompson, and shared their anger at America’s private health insurers.
Mayorkas said he was “troubled by the heroism attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the street in New York.”
Mr. Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of the largest U.S. health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, was shot dead outside a Manhattan hotel early on Dec. 4, sparking a widespread manhunt for the killer.
Mr. Mangione, 26, was arrested days later in Pennsylvania and flown to New York, where he faces both federal and state charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.
Investigators accuse him of carrying out a targeted killing and point to evidence that suggests long-standing hostility toward the U.S. health care industry. On social media, support for Mr. Mangione was often accompanied by complaints and complaints about health insurance.
“We have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time,” Mayorkas said Sunday. “We have seen narratives of hate. We have seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We have seen personal grievances expressed in the language of violence.”
Mayorkas, whose Department of Homeland Security is partly responsible for protecting Americans from domestic terrorism, said his department sees a “wide range of narratives” that “drive some people toward violence.”
“This is something we are very concerned about,” he said. “This is a heightened threat environment.”
But the 65-year-old, whose term at the helm of the department ends next month, stressed that Mr. Thompson’s killing was “the actions of an individual (and) not a reflection of the American public.”
Mr Mangione will remain behind bars in New York as his lawyers said last week they would not seek bail. He is in federal custody at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, the same facility where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held.
He will likely be assigned a roommate and will be visited daily by medical and psychological services, law enforcement sources told the BBC’s U.S. affiliate CBS.
Although New York does not have the death penalty, he faces four federal charges, including murder and stalking, that could make him eligible for the sentence. He also faces several state charges.
He is expected to be arraigned on those state charges in New York on Monday. Mr. Mangione faces 11 counts, including first-degree murder and murder as a crime of terrorism.
