Captured by Lunacy: How Identity Politics Softened a Terror Case Against a Supreme Court Justice
Nicholas Roske didn’t just show up at Brett Kavanaugh’s house upset about a ruling. He flew across the country from California with a Glock, ammunition, zip ties, a crowbar, duct tape, a tactical vest, and a plan—to assassinate a sitting Supreme Court justice and change the balance of the Court for decades to come. He was stopped only because he called 911 on himself after spotting federal marshals. Prosecutors called it terrorism. They asked for thirty years. Judge Deborah Boardman gave him eight.
The judge didn’t just show leniency; she wrapped it in a moral narrative. During sentencing, Boardman called the crime “absolutely reprehensible,” yet spent a striking amount of time discussing Roske’s gender identity—referring to him as “Sophie” and describing him as a “transgender woman.” She voiced concern about how he would be treated in custody, whether he’d be housed in a male facility, and whether he’d receive “gender-affirming care.” Those considerations became part of the sentencing calculus. She acknowledged the gravity of the act, then balanced it against the “unique circumstances” of his identity and “sincere remorse.”
That is not neutrality. That’s cultural capture. When a judge absorbs the ideological premise that identity confers moral credit, the scales of justice no longer weigh conduct—they weigh narrative. Roske’s self-description, not his intent, became the dominant variable. The court’s compassion was calibrated through a political lens: not “What must we do to deter the next would-be assassin?” but “How will this sentence affect a defendant who identifies as transgender?”
In a saner era, that question wouldn’t even appear. The public interest in deterring attacks on judges would outweigh every personal detail. But modern institutional culture has been re-coded. Identity now functions as a form of insulation. Certain categories—transgender, activist, mentally distressed—automatically trigger the empathy script, softening the moral frame and lowering the expected penalty. Once that script is internalized, it operates without conscious bias. No lobbying required. The ideology lives inside the decision-maker.
Boardman called Roske “an atypical defendant in an atypical case.” That phrase became the bridge between accountability and absolution. The media followed suit, recycling his chosen name, highlighting his mental-health struggles, and treating his gender identity as central context. The headlines didn’t lead with “Man Sentenced for Attempted Assassination of Supreme Court Justice.” They led with “Transgender Defendant Gets Eight Years.” That pivot is the capture mechanism in action—the reframing of a constitutional threat into a therapeutic story about personal struggle.
There’s nothing wrong with compassion in ordinary cases. But this was not ordinary. This was a man who mapped out a hit on a justice of the United States Supreme Court because he didn’t like where the law was heading. That’s the definition of political violence. When a federal judge responds to that by foregrounding gender identity, she isn’t being kind; she’s signaling that ideology can still purchase leniency even at the edge of treason.
The deeper danger isn’t one light sentence—it’s the precedent that moralized identity now competes with the rule of law. The same establishment that preaches about “protecting democracy” just discounted the most literal attack on it. Equal justice cannot survive double standards this visible. If a conservative man in a red hat had plotted to kill Justice Sotomayor, there would be no talk of “atypical defendants,” no anxiety about facility placement, no eight-year cap. The difference isn’t the facts—it’s the narrative ecosystem surrounding them.
The Department of Justice has vowed to appeal, and it should. But even if the term is lengthened, the cultural signal remains: when identity politics enters the courtroom, justice becomes contingent. This was not mercy—it was moral favoritism dressed up as empathy. Every time the bench allows ideology to override deterrence, it invites the next fanatic to test the system’s softness.
The judiciary was designed to be insulated from passion. But when the passion of the age—its hierarchies of identity and grievance—seeps into the bloodstream of sentencing, the law itself bends. The Republic cannot afford that kind of compassion.