Luigi Mangione to return to court following plea talks
Luigi Mangione appears at an evidence suppression hearing at Manhattan Supreme Court on May 18, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jeenah Moon-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Accused killer Luigi Mangione is due back in Manhattan federal court Monday after talks to resolve his case with a guilty plea stopped without a deal.
Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to federal charges he stalked UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson before shooting and killing him in December 2024 in Midtown Manhattan, is scheduled to stand trial in federal court in early 2027.
Ahead of Monday’s hearing, defense attorneys and federal prosecutors discussed a possible plea deal, sources told ABC News, but the talks stopped without one. It’s not clear how close to a deal they came or whether they will try again. Criminal defendants can change their plea before or during trial.
On Monday, the parties are expected to discuss plans for a trial, including the questionnaire prospective jurors will complete before in-person voir dire questioning.
Mangione has also pleaded not guilty to state charges he murdered Thompson and is scheduled to stand trial in New York State Supreme Court in September.
Defense attorneys recently gave notice that they intended to mount a psychiatric defense to the state charges, arguing Mangione experienced an extreme emotional disturbance prior to shooting Thompson, but they quickly withdrew the notice before a deadline to turn over his psychiatric records.
People hold photos of those who perished in the Eaton Fire during a memorial service, July 7, 2025, honoring the 19 lives lost in Altadena, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — More than 18 months after it ignited and became one of the most destructive wildfires in U.S. history, authorities announced the cause of the 2025 Eaton Fire in Southern California.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD) and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) on Tuesday released a report blaming the Eaton Fire on electrical arcing events that took place on an out-of-service Southern California Edison (SCE) tower.
The Eaton Fire, which started on Jan. 7, 2025, ravaged the community of Altadena near Los Angeles, killing 19 people and destroying more than 9,400 homes and businesses, authorities said.
“I recognize that no report or investigation into the Eaton Fire can ease the deep pain and tragedy our residents have endured,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony C. Marrone said in a statement. “While the cause has been determined, our focus remains on assisting our residents to rebuild their homes and livelihoods, and ensuring lessons learned drive meaningful and impactful change in memory of the 19 lives lost.”
SCE is the primary electric utility company for much of the Southern California, serving 15 million people.
Lawyers representing plaintiffs in numerous lawsuits against SCE released a joint statement, saying the report leaves the company “no place to hide,” and called it “an important step toward accountability.”
Besides the thousands of homes lost in the Eaton Fire, more than 1,000 other homes were damaged, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
The Eaton Fire caused an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion in damage, according to a 2025 report by Verisk, a global data analytics company serving the insurance sector.
“It’s time for Edison to stop fighting the victims it harmed and provide every Eaton Fire survivor with the full compensation they deserve,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.
The report by LACFD and Cal Fire found that the origin of the Eaton Fire was a hillside transmission tower above Eaton Canyon Wash, and sparks from the arching electrical lines set dry vegetation beneath the tower on fire. Gusting winds in the area rapidly spread the blaze into residential areas of Altadena, destroying block after block of homes and prompting thousands of evacuations.
It took about a month for firefighters to fully extinguish the Eaton conflagration, which burned about 22 square miles.
The Eaton Fire occurred the same week as the Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and wiped out more than 6,800 homes in nearby Pacific Palisades and Malibu. The cause of the Palisades Fire was determined to be arson, and a 29-year-old Florida man was arrested in October of 2025 on charges of setting the fire, officials said.
Together, the Eaton and Palisades fires caused an estimated $28 billion in damage, according to Verisk.
David Eisenhauer, an SCE spokesperson, told ABC News on Tuesday afternoon that the utility giant is reviewing the report from the LA County Fire Department and Cal Fire.
“We have taken our potential role in the start of this fire seriously from the beginning,” Eisenhauer said. “As we’ve previously said, SCE believes that it is likely that its equipment was associated with the ignition of the Eaton Fire.”
Eisenhauer added, “Our hearts are with the Altadena community, and we continue to support them as they recover and rebuild through our Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program.”
ABC News reported on Jan. 13, 2025, as the Eaton and Palisades fires were still burning, that one possible theory for the cause of the Eaton blaze involved transmission lines or electric facilities.
At the time, witnesses shared with ABC News Ring camera and cellphone videos that appeared to show what they believe to be the start of the Eaton Fire at the base of a transmission tower in the Eaton Canyon area.
In their report, fire investigators said that pursuant to the California Public Utilities Code, “SCE is to maintain and operate its electrical lines and equipment in a manner that would minimize the risk of catastrophic wildfire posed by them.”
SCE has claimed in lawsuits filed earlier this year that Los Angeles County emergency authorities failed to send timely evacuation warnings to residents in east and west Altadena. Most of the people who died in the fire lived in west Altadena.
Jail booking photo of Michael Butler, who was arrested, July 1, 2026, on a manslaughter charge stemming from a crash of a Tesla into a home in Katy, Texas, that killed a 76-year-old woman. (Harris County Sheriff’s Office)
(KATY, Texas) — A Texas man has been arrested on a manslaughter charge after his Tesla crashed into a home last month while he claimed it was in self-driving mode, killing a woman inside the residence, authorities said.
The driver, Michael Butler, was arrested on Wednesday and booked at the Harris County Jail, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.
Butler is scheduled to appear in court for arraignment on July 6, according to online jail records. He remained in custody on Thursday morning, according to jail records.
The fatal crash allegedly involving Butler unfolded on June 19 in the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, according to the sheriff’s office.
Butler was traveling in his Tesla Model 3 around 8 p.m. local time and claimed the vehicle was operating “with an automated driving assistance system,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Butler allegedly failed to drive in a single lane, left the roadway and crashed through the front of a two-story brick residence, according to the sheriff’s office.
Butler’s car allegedly drove into the front room of the home, pinning 76-year-old Martha Avila, the sheriff’s office said.
Avila was airlifted to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, the sheriff’s office said.
Avila’s family filed a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit last month in Harris County District Court, alleging Tesla and Butler were negligent.
“So, what we have is a horrific and what we believe will be proven to show preventable crash amidst a rising number of autonomous vehicle crashes, particularly including Tesla. And in this particular situation, a 76-year-old grandmother who was tragically, preventively and needlessly killed while in her own residence,” Ryan Zehl, an attorney for Avila’s family, told ABC News in an interview last month.
Investigators said Butler, who was injured, showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperating with investigators.
It was unclear on Thursday if Butler had hired an attorney.
Investigators said Butler claimed his car was in self-driving mode, but Tesla disputed that and alleged he overrode the feature.
Following the crash, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, posted a response on social media, saying Butler’s account of the crash “makes no sense.”
“FSD [full self-driving] drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high-speed crash!” Musk said in his post.
In a separate online post, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of artificial intelligence, responded to Musk, alleging that the self-driving mode on Butler’s vehicle was manually overridden.
“Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area,” Eluswamy claimed in his post. “They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.”
Zehl said that Tesla has a system called a collision snapshot that sends data to its servers during significant crashes.
“So they clearly have the data because they’re talking about accelerator data. We would like to see it. We don’t have it. We will request it,” Zehl said.
The crash is being investigated by local authorities, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he prepares to board Air Force One at Beijing Capital International Airport on May 15, 2026 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Department of Justice is finalizing a deal to launch a so-called “Truth and Justice Commission” and establish a compensation fund of $1,776,000,000 to pay claims made by alleged victims of government “weaponization” in exchange for President Donald Trump dropping his ongoing lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, sources told ABC News.
Sources told ABC News that the proposed deal — which is likely to face legal hurdles and has already been criticized by Democrats as a “slush fund” for Trump’s allies — arose after months of deliberations between the White House and DOJ officials who originally attempted to craft a legal justification for the settlement to compensate Trump directly.
Internally, DOJ lawers believed they could ignore the conflict of interest outright, privately arguing that Trump has both the right to sue as a private citizen and the power to command the executive branch as president, according to sources familiar with their discussions.
Advocating a centuries-old legal principle known as the “rule of necessity,” DOJ lawyers have argued that no alternative existed other than letting the lawsuit proceed with Trump acting as the plaintiff while being directly in charge of the defendants — the IRS and Treasury — according to sources.
Sources said that plan was ultimately scuttled in favor of the $1.776 billion compensation fund — with the figure being a nod to the nation’s founding — as the judge overseeing Trump’s IRS lawsuit began to raise issues with Trump suing the very government he leads. In an order last month, U.S. District Judge Katheen Williams ordered Trump’s lawyers in the case and the Department of Justice to submit court filings by next week to justify whether both sides of the case were sufficiently adverse for the matter to proceed.
Terms of the proposed compensation arrangement could change before the deal is finalized, sources said.
Judge Williams also appointed a group of prominent attorneys — including a former solicitor general as well as a federal judge — to weigh in on the case.
In a court filing this week, the attorneys identified serious issues with the lawsuit, arguing that Trump has “extraordinary” control over the defendants in the case and that the “circumstances raise the specter that Defendants and their attorneys may instead be operating at the President’s direction.”
“Additionally, since taking office, President Trump has significantly expanded the President’s oversight and control over the Attorney General and DOJ, including in ways that blur the line between fidelity to the President’s policy priorities and fidelity to the President himself,” the filing said.
Trump sued the IRS after a government contractor pleaded guilty in 2023 to stealing the tax information of Trump and other wealthy Americans and leaking it to media outlets in 2019 and 2020.
With Judge Williams scrutinizing the case, sources said that DOJ officials formulated the proposal to create a compensation fund on the condition that Trump drops the lawsuit as well as two civil claims for $230 million related to the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term in office and the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump himself would not be eligible for payment from the fund for those three dropped claims, though entities associated with the president are not barred from filing claims, the sources said.
Sources said the “President Donald J. Trump Truth and Justice Commission” would include five commissioners — four of whom are appointed by the attorney general — that Trump would have the right to remove without cause. The commission would also be under no obligation to disclose the process for awarding the nearly $2 billion.
It is unclear how Judge Williams might respond to the proposed settlement — which has yet been disclosed to the court — though DOJ lawyers believe the settlement would not require any approval from the court.
Democratic lawmakers have already raised concerns about the reported settlement and called on Congress to pass legislation to restrict the use of taxpayer dollars for the proposed compensation fund.
“It’s outright corruption. What we’re seeing here is outright corruption,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Friday. “We’re looking at a billion dollars for a ballroom; $1.7 billion for a slush fund for the president’s friends.”
Across the aisle, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick suggested the matter could end up before the Supreme Court.
“I don’t even know how that’s allowable to happen,” Fitzpatrick told ABC News regarding the compensation fund. “It sounds like a question our colleagues across the street are going to have to resolve pretty quickly.”
