Eight years in prison. That’s apparently what the near-assassination of a Supreme Court justice is going for these days in the hands of a leftist judge.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland handed down a mere eight-year sentence to the man (now insisting he’s a woman) who showed up at conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home with a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, lock picks, duct tape, pepper spray, and other burglary tools. And murder on his mind.
‘Abhorrent Form of Terrorism’
Nicholas Roske, who now goes by “Sophie,” would have tried to carry out his deadly errand had he not spotted the U.S. Marshals outside the justice’s house. That’s what he told investigators. The California resident, who was 26 at the time, had hoped to kill three of the high court’s conservative justices in pursuit of swinging the balance of powers to liberals, court documents state. He told investigators he was outraged after a leaked draft opinion indicated the majority was about to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending federal protection of abortion.
“The defendant’s criminal conduct — the Attempted Assassination of a Justice of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 351(c) — required extensive premeditation. 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,” states the government’s Sept. 19 sentencing memo.
“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,” the memo added.
Prosecutors had recommended Boardman follow federal sentencing guidelines and sentence Roske to “no fewer than 30 years to life imprisonment.” The Biden-nominated judge decided to lean closer to the defense’s more lenient recommendation. In delivering her sentence, Boardman followed the left’s pronoun guide in referring to the would-be assassin.
“Though she got far too close to executing her plans, the fact of the matter is she abandoned them,” Boardman said of the formerly named Nicholas Roske.
The judge took into account appeals from Roske’s family, his apology to the Kavanaugh family, and the fact that the convict surrendered without incident and cooperated with law enforcement officials.
ABA Approved
Boardman’s relatively light sentence should come as no surprise to those who have followed American jurisprudence on the left side of the bench.
According to her nomination files, the Maryland federal judge “is the daughter of the American Revolution on her father’s side and a first-generation American of Palestinian descent on her mother’s side.” Her mother was born in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank.
Biden’s White House cheered the former magistrate and longtime defense attorney as reflecting “the president’s deeply held conviction that the federal bench should reflect the full diversity of the American people — both in background and in professional experience.”
Boardman has, like many of her fellow left-leaning federal district court judges, ruled multiple times against President Trump’s agenda. In August, she ruled that the administration cannot end so-called “birthright citizenship” for anchor babies born to illegal immigrants. The order butted up against a U.S. Supreme Court opinion in June that reined in district court judges from issuing sweeping nationwide injunctions.
In shorthand, here’s all that may be necessary to know about where Boardman’s judicial philosophy lies.
“The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary gave Judge Boardman its highest, unanimous ‘well qualified’ recommendation after evaluating her integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament,” then-Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, wrote in his letter supporting the judge’s nomination.
Left-Wing Political Violence
Roske’s assassination plot was one of many in a spate of left-wing violence in recent years that has included two assassination attempts in 2024 on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, shootings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, and the assassination last month of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
And the incident marked another in a growing list of trans-related violent crimes.
As the New York Post reported, Roske’s defense attorneys asked the judge for mercy because their client has a “history of mental illness” and the “harshness of the conditions of confinement” in a federal prison because of policies “regarding transgender inmates.”