Nicholas Roske, 29, pleaded guilty to one felony count and could face 30 years or more in prison.
WASHINGTON — A California man pleaded guilty Tuesday to attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his suburban Maryland home in 2022.
Nicholas Roske, 29, pleaded guilty in federal court in Greenbelt to one count of attempting to assassinate a justice of the United States. In a court filing last week, federal prosecutors said Roske intended to enter his plea without the benefit of a deal from the government.
The decision to plead guilty was an about-face for Roske, who had been scheduled to begin a jury trial in June. Roske has been detained since his arrest in 2022 after calling 911 on himself near Kavanaugh’s Montgomery County home. Roske told an emergency dispatcher he was having thoughts of harming himself and Kavanaugh and had a firearm in his suitcase. A search of Roske’s luggage after his arrest turned up a 9mm Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammo, a black tactical chest rig, a knife, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a crowbar and duct tape. In a post-arrest interview with police, Roske reportedly said he was upset about the leak of the then-draft decision that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade as well as the possibility that Kavanaugh would vote to loosen gun control laws.
“ROSKE stated that he began thinking about how to give his life a purpose and decided that he would kill the Supreme Court Justice after finding the Justice’s Montgomery County address on the Internet,” prosecutors said in court filings at the time.
In a filing last month, federal prosecutors said in the weeks prior to traveling to Maryland Roske had sent messages over an encrypted app saying he intended to kill three Supreme Court justices in an effort to change the ideological composition of the court.
“Yeah but I could get at least one, which would change the votes for decades to come,” Roske allegedly wrote. “And I am shooting for 3.”
Prosecutors have indicated they will seek a federal terrorism enhancement and a sentencing range between 30 years and life in prison. Roske’s sentencing was set for Oct. 3 before U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, a former assistant federal public defender who was appointed to the bench in 2019 by President Joe Biden.
