Nicholas Roske, the would-be assassin who targeted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022, told law enforcement that he had been inspired by the leak of a draft opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Police arrested Roske in June 2022, after the defendant allegedly traveled to Maryland from California to murder Kavanaugh. The Biden administration continued to allow protests at Kavanaugh’s house, against existing federal law.
Roske has been waiting three years for a trial. His lawyers filed Friday to suppress evidence of his confession to federal investigators, saying that he had not been apprised of his rights at the time.
The Washington Post reported Friday (emphasis added):
Nicholas Roske, who authorities allege was concerned over the court’s rightward shift, is scheduled to be tried in June on a charge of attempting to kill a Supreme Court justice. His attorneys do not want jurors to hear statements in which, according to authorities, Roske told investigators that he’d flown across the country in 2022 intending to break into Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, kill the justice and then kill himself.
Roske told investigators then that was he upset by the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion, according to an FBI affidavit. Kavanaugh supported the opinion, which signaled the court would overturn Roe v. Wade. Roske added that a recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, had him worried Kavanaugh “would side with 2nd Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws,” the affidavit states.
The leaked opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) indicated that the Court intended to overturn Roe and its extraordinary finding that a right to abortion was implicit in the Constitution.
The Dobbs decision would return authority over abortion policy to the states, and noted explicitly that its opinion applied only to the issue of abortion, and not other social issues (though Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed).
The leak caused an uproar, and inspired left-wing protests — and, evidently, the Kavanaugh assassination attempt.
The Supreme Court claimed that it could not identify the leaker, despite an investigation that lasted several months.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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