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US authorities will seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione in relation to the murder of Brian Thompson, chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest healthcare provider.

Pam Bondi, US attorney-general, on Tuesday directed federal prosecutors to pursue capital punishment for the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, who was charged with murder and stalking in the death of Thompson, who was shot outside a midtown New York City hotel on December 4.

The move is a dramatic escalation in a high-profile case that has gripped the nation, with Mangione drawing acclaim from some people with anti-capitalist views or aggrieved at the country’s sometimes costly or capricious healthcare system.

It also marks a shift in the Department of Justice’s death penalty policy. Bondi in February lifted the moratorium on federal executions that had been imposed by her predecessor Merrick Garland, who appointed by then-president Joe Biden.

“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. It “was an act of political violence”.

“After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President [Donald] Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again,” she added.

Mangione’s lawyers said the decision to seek the death penalty was a political calculation.

“By seeking to murder Luigi Mangione, the justice department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric,” defence lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said. “By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorise the American people.”

The death penalty is primarily enforced by states in the US, and the federal government has had a limited and uneven history of using it. Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates in one of his last acts in office, leaving just three remaining to face the death penalty: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing attack, and Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers, who were both convicted of separately killing worshippers at religious facilities.

But Trump signed an executive order restoring the use of the federal death penalty on his first day back in the White House. The federal death row is located at a maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where inmates are executed by lethal injection.

The decision may also set up a confrontation between federal and local New York state prosecutors, who have also charged Mangione in the shooting. New York does not have a death penalty. Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case and has yet to submit a plea in the federal case.

Federal prosecutors have alleged Mangione travelled to New York to stalk and shoot Thompson in front of a Manhattan hotel, in an attempt to share his own views across the US.

Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania after five days on the run, where authorities said they found the same fake New Jersey ID card used by the suspected shooter to check in to a New York hostel ahead of the murder; a gun and silencer consistent with the one believed to have been used against Thompson; and clothing matching the items worn by the shooter as captured on video.

Additional reporting by Myles McCormick