WASHINGTON—Unlike Judge Deborah Boardman, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has no sympathy for the trans-identifying man who attempted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she told The Daily Wire on Tuesday.
Leavitt was responding to comments made by the Maryland judge, named to the bench by former President Joe Biden, who sentenced Nicholas Roske to only eight years in prison and told him at his sentencing: “I am heartened that this terrible infraction has helped the Roske family … accept their daughter for who she is.”
Roske is a man who identifies as a woman. Ahead of his sentencing, his parents and family argued to the judge that their son should be treated leniently and given an opportunity to “thrive” as a transgender woman, court documents show. Boardman gave Roske eight years in prison, instead of the 30 years that the Justice Department had requested.
Asked about Boardman’s comment, Leavitt argued that political violence must be answered by severe punishment in order to actually deter criminals.
“The transgender maniac who traveled to Justice Kavanaugh’s home to murder him and his family over the draft Dobbs opinion leak doesn’t deserve a single ounce of sympathy,” Leavitt told The Daily Wire on Tuesday.
“This attempted assassin received a ridiculous, lenient sentence by a Biden judge when he should have been sentenced to at least 30 years in prison like the Department of Justice recommended,” she said. “Political violence must be severely punished and deterred, not excused away.”
This sentiment was echoed by the Department of Justice.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told The Daily Wire on September 19 that the attempted assassination was “an attack on the entire judicial system that cannot go unpunished” and her Justice Department attorneys had argued that the court’s sentence “must send the unequivocal, clear, and strong message that attempted violence and threats of violence against members of the judiciary — as well as other public and federal officials — cannot and will not be tolerated, and will be justly and severely condemned.”
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They specifically said that the court’s sentence must be significant enough to not only “reflect the harm sought to be inflicted on the judiciary,” but also to send a message that the “consequences for these acts — no fewer than 30 years to life in prison — are not worth the perceived ideological ends.”
On Friday, the Justice Department told The Daily Wire that Bondi intends to appeal Roske’s sentence.
“The attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a disgusting attack against our entire judicial system by a profoundly disturbed individual,” Bondi said in a statement at the time. “The Department of Justice will be appealing the woefully insufficient sentence imposed by the district court, which does not reflect the horrific facts of this case.”
Roske pleaded guilty to the attempt to kill a United States Supreme Court Justice in April 2025, three years after authorities arrested him in Kavanaugh’s neighborhood, carrying a bag full of weapons and burglary tools.
The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak, who was present in the courtroom throughout Roske’s sentencing, reports that Roske has been detained for the past three years since his arrest. With time served and good behavior, Rosiak notes, Roske’s sentencing could mean he may be out of prison in four years.
Boardman gave a speech that was more than an hour, justifying her sentencing, in which she repeatedly referred to Roske as a woman, saying: “Ms. Roske came out to herself as transgender in 2020 but kept it secret. Ms. Roske’s sister came out as gay two years prior but Ms. Roske saw that their parents struggled to reconcile her sexuality with their religious beliefs.”
“Any prison time is punishment for her,” the judge said of Roske, who is a man. “The length doesn’t need to be particularly long … unduly harsh conditions make a difference, too … She will be imprisoned in a male facility even though she is a transgender prisoner, pursuant to an executive order from the president.”
The Biden-appointed judge also specifically criticized President Donald Trump, and argued: “Let’s not hide the fact that President Trump issued an executive order saying transgender inmates would be assigned to prisons with their biological sex.” Roske, Rosiak reports, is a tall man with a deep voice, whose social media posts indicate that he is attracted to women rather than “cis men.”
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