(The Epoch Times)—A California man allegedly told authorities that he flew to the East Coast to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to newly filed court documents.
Nicholas Roske flew across the country from California to Virginia on June 7, 2022, landing just before midnight.
He got into a taxi and instructed the driver to take him to a house in Maryland where Kavanaugh and his family resided.
Roske, who had allegedly brought weapons with him, was close to Kavanaugh’s home on June 8, 2022, but received a call from his sister, whom he had texted, “I love you.”
“I told her what I was doing, I was up to, and she told me that that wasn’t the way to go about trying to make the world a better place and, you know, that she didn’t want to, you know, she wanted to have me as a sibling for the rest of her life and not, you know, with that ending,” Roske said in the interview room inside a Montgomery County Police Department station.
Roske told police officers that he planned to break into the house, shoot Kavanaugh, and then shoot himself, according to a newly filed transcript.
He chose to call 911 instead of going through with his plan.
“I need psychiatric help,” he told the dispatcher, in a call that was previously made public.
Officers rushed to the scene and arrested Roske. He is scheduled to go on trial later this year and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Roske’s lawyers filed the interrogation transcript, along with other documents, as part of motions seeking to suppress statements he made to law enforcement, as well as any mention of the items officers allegedly found in his suitcase and bag.
Officers illegally searched Roske’s belongings and failed to properly obtain a waiver of his rights before interviewing him, the lawyers said.
Federal agents who questioned Roske did obtain his signature on a form waiving his rights, but that waiver “was not made voluntarily and intelligently,” the lawyers wrote in one of the motions.
“At the time, Mr. Roske was acutely suicidal, visibly exhausted, and had repeatedly expressed his need for psychiatric care,” the motion states. “Because these latter statements were not preceded by valid Miranda waivers, they too must be suppressed.”
Prosecutors have not yet responded to the motions.
Motivation
Elsewhere in the newly released interview transcript, Roske detailed his motivation for allegedly plotting to murder Kavanaugh, including the publication of a leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, giving states the ability to more closely regulate abortion.
“I’ve been suicidal for a long time, and when I saw that the leaked draft, it made me upset and then it made me want to, I don’t know,” Roske said. “I was under the delusion that I could make the world a better place by killing him.”
Roske said another motivating factor was that he heard the Supreme Court was going to loosen gun restrictions, which would make it easier for people to acquire guns.
Roske agreed that it was ironic he was able to obtain a gun before he traveled to the Washington area.
He had several psychiatric holds placed on him in the past. However, since more than five years had passed since the last one, this did not prevent him from buying a firearm.
