A 29-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022.
Nicholas John Roske, a substitute teacher who was raised in a nondenominational evangelical church in Los Angeles, California, traveled across the country with a 9 mm Glock, two magazines of ammunition, a tactical vest, a knife, a face mask, pepper spray, zip ties, and tools to break in to the Kavanaugh home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Roske texted his younger sister he loved her before going through with his plans, though, and she convinced him to call 911 instead. He was arrested around 2 a.m. on June 8, 2022.
“I’ve been mentally ill basically as long as I’ve been an adult,” Roske told the arresting officer. “And I’ve been wanting to have a sense of purpose for a long time.”
Roske said he was angered by news the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to regulate abortion. He read about the draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that was leaked online in May 2022 and started making a plan.
“What was your plan?” a detective asked him.
“Break in, shoot him, and then shoot myself,” Roske said.
Roske told police he thought abortion was a civil rights issue.
“I was under the delusion that I could make the world a better place by killing him,” he said.
According to the transcript of Roske’s confession, Roske also said he was angry the Supreme Court might loosen restrictions on purchasing guns, making it easier for people like him to acquire weapons. He was able to buy a pistol from a California gun store even though California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and Roske had been deemed a threat to himself or others and placed in involuntary psychiatric care three times as an adult.
Roske thought about suicide a lot and made multiple plans to end his life, including once planning to drive off a cliff, he told police.
In 2022, he was planning to die again but thought his suicide should somehow be meaningful. He researched the possibility of killing someone convicted of sexually abusing children, but he ultimately rejected the idea and turned to plans to assassinate Kavanaugh.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Roske was homeschooled until around age 13 and attended Shepherd’s Community Church, a nondenominational church that has since relocated, merged with another congregation, and become part of the Evangelical Free Church of America.
Roske was part of the youth group and memorized Bible verses with Awana, a classmate said.
It is unclear when Roske began to be angered by conservatives on the Supreme Court. After graduating from a public high school, he studied philosophy at Cal State Northridge, about 10 miles from his parents’ home in Simi Valley. He worked for a while as an office manager at a pest control company before becoming a substitute teacher. He told police he had only a few friends and hadn’t spoken to any of them recently.
Roske lived with his parents but described his relationship with them as “strained.” When he registered to vote in California in 2022, he did not affiliate with any of the six political parties in the state. Roske told police he did not consume a lot of news but followed the stories about mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, and the Supreme Court battle over abortion rights.
News of the draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade prompted a wave of violence in 2022 and 2023. More than 50 pro-life pregnancy clinics across the US reported vandalism, including broken windows and graffiti with threatening messages. Six clinics were set on fire.
In 2023, a graduate student from New Mexico pleaded guilty to firebombing a pro-life organization’s headquarters in Wisconsin. In 2024, three activists pleaded guilty to spray-painting “If abortions aren’t safe than [neither] are you,” “YOUR TIME IS UP!!,” and other messages on the walls of a pregnancy center in Florida.
Roske said he spent a month planning to kill Kavanaugh, buying equipment online, visiting a local gun store, practicing shooting at local range, and searching “assassin skills” on Google.
But he told police that when he saw security outside Kavanaugh’s home, he realized he hadn’t actually planned very well.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said. “It just hit me that, like, this isn’t just something in my head. This is real.”
President Joe Biden signed a law giving Supreme Court justices around-the-clock protection by the US Marshals a few days later.
Roske’s sentencing is scheduled for October. He faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison.
