(AFP) – A California man who flew across the country with a plan to assassinate a conservative US Supreme Court judge will plead guilty to the attempted killing, lawyers said Wednesday in a court filing. Nicholas Roske, 29, was arrested in June 2022 outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in a Maryland suburb of the US capital carrying a semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol, a knife, and a tactical vest, according to documents filed earlier in federal court. He told officials at the time he was upset about mass shootings and looming Supreme Court rulings on abortion and gun rights.
In a letter to a federal judge in Maryland filed on Wednesday, public defenders for Roske said he has agreed to plead guilty to the charge of attempting to assassinate a justice of the United States. An attached letter said Roske intended to kill Kavanaugh and “took a substantial step” toward actually doing it. Roske faces a maximum punishment of life in prison and a $250,000 fine, the letter said. He had been scheduled to go on trial in June.
Roske was spotted outside Kavanaugh’s house by two US Marshals standing guard. He walked away and called emergency services, telling them he was feeling suicidal and had come from California to kill Kavanaugh, according to court documents. Roske was arrested without incident by local police while he was still on the phone. He later 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,” an FBI affidavit said at the time.
In a landmark ruling, the high court went on to overturn the long-standing federal right to abortion in America. “Roske indicated that he believed the justice that he intended to kill would side with Second Amendment decisions that would loosen gun control laws,” the affidavit added. Appointed by Donald Trump during his first term as president, Kavanaugh is one of six justices in the court’s conservative wing, against three progressives.
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