The armed man who was arrested in the middle of the night on Wednesday near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s private home has been charged with attempt to murder a United States Supreme Court Justice, a Department of Justice affidavit revealed.
According to the document, U.S. Deputy Marshals saw Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, exit a taxi outside of Kavanaugh’s Maryland residence at approximately 1:05 a.m. on June 8.
Roske was dressed in all black clothing and was carrying a backpack and suitcase, which investigators later determine contained “a black tactical chest rig and tactical knife, a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammunition, paper spray, zip ties, a hammer, screwdriver, nail punch, crow bar, pistol light, duct tape, hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles, and other items.”
After exiting the taxi, Roske looked at the two Marshals and then began walking down the street. Shortly thereafter, police received a call from a man identifying himself as Roske who “informed the call taker that he was having suicidal thoughts and had a firearm in his suitcase.”
“Roske also told the call taker that he came from California to kill a specific United States Supreme Court Justice,” the affidavit said.
After his arrest, Roske told police that “he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.”
Roske also said “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.” He said he planned to kill Justice Kavanaugh before turning his gun on himself.
In May, the pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us published a map with the home addresses of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito on its website, the Washington Examiner reported.
As of Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden has not addressed the attempted murder of Justice Kavanaugh.
Last month, after the Justice Department directed the U.S. Marshals Service to “help ensure” the safety of Supreme Court justices, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn the demonstrators gathered outside the justices’ private homes.
“The president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” Psaki said. “We obviously want people’s privacy to be respected. We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest. That is certainly what the president’s view would be.”
