Nicholas Roske, the man who pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has been sentenced to 97 months in prison, a fraction of the 30 years the Justice Department was seeking.
Roske, who now identifies as a transgender woman and goes by the name “Sophie,” was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in June 2022 carrying a pistol and burglary tools. He pled guilty in April to attempting to assassinate Kavanaugh.
Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, threw out most of the terrorism enhancement that would have resulted in a harsher sentence, opting to hand Roske a sentence of just over eight years, the length of time Roske’s attorneys requested. Roske could be out in as little as four years with good behavior.
Boardman took Roske’s transgender status into consideration in determining his sentence and expressed concern during the trial that Roske would not be placed in a women’s prison due to President Trump’s executive order, the Daily Wire reported.
Roske was apparently inspired to attack Kavanaugh because he disagreed with the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade.
After Politico published the pending decision in May 2022, Roske began plotting revenge against Kavanaugh and other conservative Supreme Court justices.
“The defendant researched; planned; procured the tools for the planned killings; traveled across the entirety of the country with those tools, including a gun; and attempted to delete online evidence of motive and intent,” a sentencing memo reads.
“The defendant’s objective — to target and kill judges to seek to alter a court’s ruling — is an abhorrent form of terrorism and strikes at the core of the United States Constitution and our prescribed system of government.”
Roske searched for firearms-related terms 90 times in the month after the Politico leak. His searches included information on police response times to gunshots and silencers. Roske also conducted research on how to shoot like a sniper from long range and how to break into residences, and watched videos on mass shootings and serial killers.
He researched techniques for strangulation and killing someone quietly and looked at more than 30 websites with information on head and neck anatomy, including graphics that showed knives in the body.
He also made comments on Discord about what could happen if conservatives lost a justice on the court. Some of his messages made clear his intention to remove multiple justices.
“This attempt against the life of a Supreme Court Justice was an attack on the entire judicial system that cannot go unpunished,” Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said.
“This Department of Justice condemns political violence and our prosecutors will ensure that this disturbed individual faces severe consequences for his deranged actions.”