Hey Everyone,
Yesterday, I pegged it back from the latest Luigi Mangione hearing at New York State Supreme Courthouse to sit down with the journalist and author Nina Burleigh, author of American Freak Show, here on substack to discuss the latest Epstein news and her excellent reporting around it. (Next week she has a “bombshell” to deliver around the financier Leon Black, who testifies to Congress on June 26. We will back, talking about it).
First, though: Luigi.
Tempers frayed on both sides of the New York State courtroom yesterday in a an emotional, fiery hearing.
Luigi’s lawyers said they may pursue a “psychiatric defense”, in other words they may argue at trial that Luigi suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time of Brian Thompson’s murder. What that emotional disturbance is based on may be contained in records to be unsealed later today.
What is the significance of this? Well it’s the first implicit admission by Luigi’s defense that he murdered Brian Thompson. At trial, the prosecution still has to prove to a jury that Luigi committed the alleged crime. But if they do that and if a jury also believes he was suffering from an “EED” and “a profound loss of control” as it’s termed, then the highest charge he can be convicted of is manslaughter.
In the short term, it could also mean delays while both sides gear up psychiatric experts and discovery. Assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann looked like he might choke he was so furious as he preemptively asked Judge Gregory Carro to prevent the defense from pushing back the trial beyond September 8th. Seidemann said that Brian Thompson’s mother is 78 and is entitled to know “the why and the who” it came to be that she buried her son before the end of her life. This caused Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Luigi’s counsel to bark that she hadn’t actually asked to delay anything. Yet. No matter, it was nowJudge Carro’s turn to shout angrily, as he instructed her firmly that the trial would start on September 8th as scheduled.
This was not the only Luigi drama playing in Manhattan, however.
Last night I went to see Luigi: The Musical, here in New York for four nights only. This is the show, which notes in its marketing, a one word review in the San Francisco Chronicle: “terrible.”
My takeaways:
If you go, leave plenty of time to find the venue, Green Room 42, a cabaret on the fourth floor of a hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. Once inside the building, it took me fifteen minutes to find it. But, by showtime it was packed.
One of the elderly guys at my table said at the start he thought New York should hold a Knicks-style parade for Luigi. By the time the show concluded, he was asleep.
The show: So, there’s a small band consisting of a drummer, two guitars and a pianist behind four actors, three dressed in orange prison garb, the other dressed in blue as a prison guard. The four stand in front of microphones and enact - (sort of: it’s more like they read from binders) - a pastiche, based on a reimagining of the days inside the MDC following Mangione’s arrest. Mike Cefalo who plays Mangione, looks unnervingly like him. Two women play Diddy and SBF, so you wouldn’t get them mixed up with their doppelgangers. A burly man plays a prison guard. The “plot” is that the three inmates plan their escape, and there’s a lot of “banter” along the way. Diddy and SBF come off as entitled dicks. Mangione is supposed to be the “good” guy of the trio. “I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a normal, exceedingly handsome guy,” he tells his cellmates. He kicks it off by singing a song, wishing he hadn’t lowered his mask to smile inside the New York hostel, and that he hadn’t eaten a hash brown inside of McDonalds. Ie He wishes he hadn’t been caught. It’s sort of funny. There are lots of riffs on Mangione’s fan mail; his looks…The audience laughs.
One big problem: none of them can really sing. Mangione is the best. Diddy especially is very pitchy. Several times one has to cover ones ears.
Another problem: the music is really bad. The drummer looks bored. Did the writer not think to create a Diddy style rap for Diddy to sing? Too obvious? Feels like a missed opportunity.
Another problem: the dialogue is bad. I found myself wishing I was a few blocks East and North watching Chess for a fourth time before it closes on Sunday.
Wow. Turns out that the prison guard wants to let Mangione escape because he’s suffering from cancer….My companion thinks it’s good the show is “leaning in” to healthcare issues.
A plus: it’s only 90 minutes long and I can go home and watch episode nine of The Other Bennett Sister.
So, back to Nina and Epstein.
Nina is one of the reporters behind The Cover-Up, the Courier News project devoted to combing through the mountain of Epstein documents that have emerged over the last year. Alongside her reporting partner Katie Chenoweth, she has become one of the most dogged investigators of the files, following obscure threads that many larger news organizations have overlooked.
In our conversation we discuss:
The latest New York Times deep dive about Jeffrey Epstein’s last days inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
We agree this is one of the best pieces of original reporting you can get.
Nina’s great reporting about two sophisticated Russian women in Epstein’s orbit in her substack article, Jeff and the Red Sparrow.
It raises an uncomfortable question that sits at the center of so many Epstein stories: what exactly is the line between victim, survivor, and participant? Last week Julie K. Brown and I discussed exactly this, when we analyzed Sarah Kellen’s congressional testimony. In that case we decided, it’s clear Kellen is a victim. But I doubt many people will feel the same about the two protagonists of Nina’s piece.
The latest on Marius Borg Hoiby, the son of Norway’s Crown Princess, who has been convicted raping two women and is only sentenced to four years in jail…
Leon Black! The billionaire financier who paid Epstein $170 million for “tax advice”. I’ve reported on him frequently, as you know. He’s due to testify to congress next week and Nina promises that she has got a “bombshell” to drop.
We discuss the controversial New York Times piece on Kathy Ruemmler. Nina wrote about it here.
And the NYT excerpt of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book, Regime Change, which had Trump’s kitchen cabinet frantically meeting in the Situation Room to try to fix the Epstein Files PR headache…
Enjoy! Nina and I will be back next week.
