US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Tuesday she has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a New York hotel on December 4.

It is the first time the Justice Department has sought to bring the death penalty since US President Donald Trump returned to office in January with a vow to resume federal executions.

Mangione, a 26-year-older Ivy League graduate, faces separate federal and state murder charges for the killing, which rattled the business community while galvanising health insurance critics.

The federal charges include murder through use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The state charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to a state indictment and has not entered a plea to the federal charges.

Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state case expected to go to trial first. It was not immediately clear if Bondi’s announcement will change the order.

“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,” Bondi said in a statement that described Thompson’s killing as “an act of political violence”.