The light sentence is more than a moral outrage; it’s dangerous.
O n June 8, 2022, Nicholas Roske flew from his home in California to Washington, D.C., with a Glock, a knife, zip ties, and tactical gear in a plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The leak of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association — overturning Roe v. Wade — had inspired him to assassinate Kavanaugh before the opinion was officially published, thereby rendering it null and void. Upon taking a cab to the vicinity of Kavanaugh’s residence, he discovered it was heavily guarded by Secret Service agents who took notice of his behavior. In a panic, he called 911 to turn himself in as the authorities were already approaching.
Since you are reading National Review, you almost certainly have heard about all of this. But the haste with which the media rushed to suppress this horribly discordant news — during a summer where they were playing along with the Biden administration’s focus on “the threat of Trumpism” in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections — is something that I never forgot. (I am reminded of Dave Burge’s legendary nostrum: “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”)
In retrospect, Roske’s coldly calculated attempt to alter the fate of the nation with an assassin’s bullet should have been seen for what it was: a warning sign of things to come from a side unaccustomed to life on the losing end of political sea change. (The Klaxon had been sounding for quite some time, although few in the media had ears to hear: I first heard the bell toll myself in 2017, with the near-killing of Steve Scalise.) But because Roske was intercepted before he could get to Kavanaugh, and because it was a terribly inconvenient fact for the media to spotlight — why, they might have to take the dangers of leaking Supreme Court opinions seriously! — people chose to shut their eyes and ears to a looming threat.
You would think that in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination — to say nothing of the increasing spate of attacks on law-enforcement and immigration officials all throughout America during the Trump 47 administration — that people have awakened to the seriousness of the threat before us. But apparently not Judge Deborah L. Boardman of the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland, who just sentenced Nicholas Roske to a mere 97 months (eight years) in prison for his attempt to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh.
The Biden-appointed Judge Boardman didn’t deliver the sentence to Nicholas Roske, mind you. Roske announced in September 2024 to the court that he was now a she, going by the preferred (although not legal) new name of “Sophie.” Boardman chose not only to recognize but use this new identity as a factor in significantly reducing Roske’s sentence. New York Times reporter Mattathias Schwartz writes:
Judge Boardman’s explanation of her sentence restated some of the arguments made by Ms. Roske’s attorneys, who said that a lesser sentence was warranted because Ms. Roske, who had no prior criminal history, had abandoned her plan at the final moment, surrendered to authorities, told them about the plot and was genuinely remorseful. . . .
The judge also said that a lower sentence was warranted because of an executive order issued by President Trump mandating that transgender women be held at male-only federal facilities, which she said could interfere with her continuing to receive gender transition care.
I am so stunned by this logic that I nearly lack for words. In a way, I hope that the multifaceted, vile absurdity of these paragraphs speaks for itself. But at the risk of sacrificing my typical elegance for a blunt list of grievances, I will spell it out: This verdict is a recipe for judicial assassinations.
Leave aside the sheep-headed progressive logic of the judge, who — as the Times notes, almost in shock — accepted the logic of Roske’s public defender: that he was just a “good kid who made a mistake and admitted it.” The facts of the case make it clear that he did no such thing: He saw that Kavanaugh was shielded by a visible police presence, realized that he had been “made” by Secret Service agents who were now tailing him, and then phoned 911 in a rush like a skydiver pulling an emergency ripcord. (“I turned myself in after I already knew I was caught with a bag full of murder gear” is not a mitigating defense to anyone except a willing fool.)
Beyond that, consider the gravity of the offense: Attempted murder is itself a major felony, worthy of jail time. An attempted political assassination is a geometrically graver offense, an attack not just on one man but on the national polity. And the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice — for explicitly political reasons! — is the sort of thing that courts simply cannot afford to downplay or look sympathetic toward.
The fact that Judge Boardman’s sympathy seems to spring from her progressive affinities and obligations — the trans agenda must always and forever come first in priority, even over criminal justice — creates the most grotesque incentives imaginable for future offenders: Just claim to have been a woman all this time, and you can go from 60 years in prison to 97 months, with time off for trans behavior. I don’t know what sort of signal Boardman was trying to send with this incomprehensibly light sentencing, but I can tell you the one being received loud and clear right now, just as loud as those warning Klaxons I told you about: encouragement to continue onward.