Kavanaugh’s Attempted Assassin Identifies as Transgender—Court Filing

The defendant who pleaded guilty in the 2022 plot to assassinate the judge of the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh identifies himself as transgender, according to the judicial archives examined by NowsweekWho notes that the lawyer will designate Nicholas Roske as Sophie or “Mrs. Roske” and will use “female pronouns”.

Nowsweek contacted Roske’s lawyer to comment by e-mail on Saturday.

Why it matters

In April, Roske pleaded guilty of having tried to assassinate conservative justice in June 2022. Roske, who was 26 years old at the time, was arrested near the Kavanaugh residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, armed with a firearm and a knife and ties, the authorities announced.

Debates on political violence, mass shootings and links with the alleged transgender shooters have intensified in recent weeks, after the September 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at the University of Utah Valley (UVU) and a mass shot at the end of the August in a Catholic church in Minneapolis.

Kirk was killed by speaking of transgender shooters. Utah governor Spencer Cox said that the suspect in detention Tyler Robinson was in a romantic relationship with his roommate, “a man in transition to a woman”. Robin Westman, who was transgender, killed two children and injured many others at the Catholic School Annunciation of Minneapolis during mass last month.

Armed violence experts note that transgender shooters constitute a small fraction of cases.

What to know

In a memorandum of September 19 filed before the conviction of Roske October 3, his legal team noted in a footnote that, even if the case is subtitled United States c. Nicholas John Roske“This name remains the legal name of Ms. Roske, and she did not ask to replace the case. Out of respect for Ms. Roske, the balance of this plea and the argument in the law of the lawyer will call her Sophie and will use female pronouns.”

The deposit, which notes that Roske has deposited a guilt of guilt and noticed the “gravity” of the offense, declares that the conviction should be attenuated by several factors, in particular “the harshness of the confinement conditions that Ms. Roske will face due to the current prison policies office concerning transgender prisoners and the lack of adequate mental health resources”. “”

The court documents noted that “in 2020, Sophie came to herself as a trans woman and asked for medical care”. The details on the question were not made public, but the file also said that Roske “came to his sister and his closest friends as a trans between 2020 and at the beginning of 2021. At the time, Sophie was certain that her parents would not have accepted her gender identity.”

During the deposit of determination of the government’s sentence on September 19, the accusation noted that at one point, Roske was aimed at three “judges in office of the Supreme Court of the United States”, adding that “the explicit objective of the defendant was to modify the constitutional order of ideological ends” alone.

The attempted assassination of Kavanaugh de Roske took place a few weeks before the court decision to cancel the historic case of abortion rights, Roe c. Wade. A memo had been disclosed on the issue, showing that a majority of judges were about to attack him.

What people say

Prosecutor General Pam Bondi said on Friday: “This attempt against the life of a judge of the Supreme Court was an attack on the entire judicial system which cannot be unpunished. This Ministry of Justice condemns political violence and our prosecutors will ensure that this disturbed person is confronted with serious consequences for his disturbed actions.”

Fox News host Jesse Watters said in a Friday segment: “Deposits show that Roske actually used female pronouns before trying to kill Kavanaugh. So we have more trans terrorism. Sophie risks 30 years in prison and has already pleaded guilty.”

Jaclyn Schildkraut, Executive Director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government,, said Nowsweek In August after the Catholic School of Annunciation filming:: “Mass public shootings, as what happened yesterday in Minneapolis, is extremely rare (less than 0.5% of all the crimes that occur each year). Mass public shots identifying as transgender are a simple fraction (probably an even smaller percentage of incidents).

What happens next?

On Friday, the American lawyer’s office for the Maryland district published a memo of determining the sentence, asking for a 30 -year sentence for Roske “followed by a supervised release for life”. The defense, however, recommended a “sentence of 96 months of incarceration followed by a 25 -year -old supervised liberation period”.

Roske will be sentenced on October 3.

Correction 9/20/25, 13:47 pm HE: This article has been updated to indicate that the defense recommended an incarceration of 96 months.