A 32-year-old marketing professional now based in Los Angeles, Kimmy initially became drawn to the case after learning that Mangione is also from Maryland. “Otherwise it’s just another shooting in America,” she says. Her interest deepened, though, as the political stakes developed and potentially complicated the legal proceedings. (Erika Kirk recently wondered in a CBS appearance “how social media will impact that court case, just how it might impact mine,” referring to the similar surfeit of attention that has accompanied the assassination of her late husband, Charlie Kirk.)
Soon she was captivated by the Agnifilos themselves, and the legal strategy they were building. “The case itself is already so interesting,” Kimmy says, “but the fight to control the narrative bleeding in and out of court adds another incredibly interesting layer.” (Mangione has pleaded not guilty in this case as well as a parallel federal case.)
The Agniflos met in 1992, when they were both working in the Manhattan district’s attorney office and Karen assisted Marc on a case involving one deliveryman cutting off another’s hand with a machete amid a feud over a parking spot. Their work, together and apart, eventually took them to some of the most knotty and high-profile spots in defense law.
Former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn sits with Marc Agnifilo.Richard Drew/AFP/Getty Images.
Karen Friedman Agnifilo addresses the Mangione press corps.Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images.
When Marc’s firm represented Dominique Strauss-Kahn in his 2011 sexual assault case, Karen, still working as a prosecutor, had to recuse herself. (Prosecutors ultimately dropped criminal charges of attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn, and a civil case was settled.) 50 Cent’s recent Netflix documentary about Sean “Diddy” Combs includes footage of the mogul screaming at Marc on the phone over the state of his case, leading TMZ to describe the attorney as the “true victim in all of this.” Agnifilo was Combs’s lead attorney in his federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial, which was largely regarded as a victory for Combs after he was convicted only on lesser prostitution counts.
In Mangione, the couple has found a celebrity defendant drawing a particularly personal degree of investment from his fans, with his facial expressions and movements in court dissected for meaning in online communities. A, a London-based paralegal who asked to be identified by her first initial, co-runs an advocacy platform for Mangione called Free Luigi NYC and devotes time to breaking down the legal maneuvering in the case. She attended a day of the court proceedings this month and attested that the Agnifilos had become stars.
