No record of Luigi Mangione posting 'he who saves his country' quote | Fact check

The claim: Image shows Luigi Mangione post of quote linked to Napoleon Bonaparte

A Feb. 17 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of what appears to be a Feb. 15 X post from Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the December 2024 shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” reads text of the purported X post.

The Threads post was reposted more than 300 times in a week.

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Our rating: Manipulated media

The image is a fabrication. There is no record of the post on Mangione’s X account. He was in federal custody at the time the supposed post was shared.

No record of post on Mangione’s account

Mangione, 26, faces federal and state charges related to the fatal shooting of Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, on a Manhattan street. He has been in federal custody since Dec. 9 of that year and was incarcerated at a detention center in Brooklyn on Feb. 15, when the fabricated X post attributed to him was supposedly shared.

Fact check: This isn't Luigi Mangione's fake ID. It's a doctored 'Superbad' replica

There is no record of that post on his verified account. He has not written a post since May 14, 2024, and he reposted four other posts that June.

An identical quote – with the first letters of the words “country” and “law” also capitalized – was shared by President Donald Trump at 1:32 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 15, the same day the post attributed to Mangione supposedly was shared. Timestamps on X posts are determined by the clock on each viewer’s device. That means for a user in the Mountain time zone, the time on the Trump post is displayed as 11:32 a.m. – the same time in the timestamp on the purported Mangione post.

While there are no legitimate media reports about the post attributed to Mangione, the one from Trump generated widespread coverage by credible outlets. The quote in both posts is often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who ruled France in the early 1800s. A version of it was spoken by the Napoleon character in the 1970 film “Waterloo" as part of his justification of the methods used during his rise to power.

USA TODAY previously debunked false claims that an image shows Mangione’s mugshot and that CBNC reported earlier in February that he died in jail.

USA TODAY reached out to the Threads user who shared the image but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact and Check Your Fact also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources

• Luigi Mangione, accessed Feb. 25, X account
• Donald Trump, Feb. 15, X post
• Medium, Aug. 9, 2019, Important heads-up: Did you know that Twitter has changed how its timestamps are determined?

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