Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that she has directed federal prosecutors to seek a death sentence for the man accused of killing a health-care executive in Manhattan last year — the first time the Justice Department will pursue capital punishment during the Trump administration.

Luigi Mangione, 26, faces state and federal charges in the fatal shooting Brian Thompson, chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, on a Manhattan sidewalk in December.

In a statement Tuesday, Bondi characterized Thompson’s killing as an act of carefully plotted political violence.

“Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America,” she said. “After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case.”

Bondi’s pronouncement marks a significant step in her push to have the Justice Department ramp up its use of the death penalty. She and President Donald Trump both staunchly support capital punishment and have vowed to resume federal executions after they were paused during the Biden administration.

Prosecutors had filed a federal complaint listing charges against Mangione in December, including stalking counts and a count of murder with the use of a firearm. While these counts could carry a potential death sentence, prosecutors did not say at the time whether they would seek such a penalty.

An indictment — which formalizes the charges in a complaint and is a necessary step before going to trial — has not yet been unsealed in Mangione’s federal case. It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to announce it will seek a death sentence in a case in which no indictment has been unsealed.

Mangione publicly criticized the U.S. health-care industry before the killing. Friends have said that Mangione, who is from a prominent Maryland family and was a valedictorian and student leader, struggled for years with back problems and that they lost track of him in the months before Thompson’s death.

After Thompson’s death, Mangione became the subject of praise and fascination for some people, who assailed the health-care industry and offered him messages of support. Trump criticized this positive response in December, calling it “a sickness.”

Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, called Bondi’s announcement “barbaric.”

“This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship,” Agnifilo said in a statement. “Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man’s life.”

Thompson, 50, was gunned down while in New York attending a conference. The shooting on Dec. 4, which was captured on a security camera, ignited a high-profile manhunt.

Five days after Thompson’s death, Mangione was taken into custody while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Mangione faces 11 state charges in New York, including multiple murder charges, and has pleaded not guilty.

New York state does not have the death penalty, and if convicted on the most serious charges there, Mangione could face life in prison without parole.

He appeared in federal court on Dec. 19. A magistrate judge read him his rights; his lawyer did not seek bail pending trial. He most recently appeared in New York state court in February for a procedural hearing.

When the federal charges were announced in December, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan said the state case was expected to proceed first. It was unclear if that would change following Bondi’s announcement. The state case is being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which declined to comment on her statement.

Bondi’s remarks on Tuesday did not elaborate on what went into her considerations about the case. Before deciding to seek death sentences, the Justice Department sends cases to an internal capital review committee for a recommendation on whether the punishment should be sought, though the final decision rests with the attorney general.

The Mangione case was sent to the committee for review, according to an official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the internal matter. The committee’s recommendation has not been made public.

After taking office in February, Bondi issued a directive that she said was focused on “reviving the federal death penalty.”

In her memo, Bondi said she would lift a moratorium on federal executions imposed by Attorney General Merrick Garland during the Biden administration. Bondi also ordered officials to review death-penalty-eligible cases that are still pending but for which the Biden administration did not seek capital punishment.

During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department carried out 13 federal executions. While Garland announced a moratorium on federal executions, the Justice Department had sought and defended death sentences on his watch, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Prosecutors sought a death sentence in 2023 for a man convicted of killing eight people by driving a truck onto a New York City bike path in 2017. The case began during Trump’s first term but only went to trial during Biden’s presidency. Jurors convicted the attacker of the killings but were split on whether to sentence him to death. He was instead sentenced to life in prison.

Near the end of his term, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life in prison without parole. This decision was assailed by Bondi, who called it “appalling.”

The three people who remain on federal death row are the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, a gunman who killed worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue and another attacker who massacred people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The Boston and Charleston attackers were sentenced during the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president. The Pittsburgh attacker was sentenced during Biden’s presidency.