The would-be Kavanaugh assassin wanted to kill 3
I”m referring to this:
The California man accused of plotting to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had an expansive goal to change the makeup of the Supreme Court “for decades to come,” according to a recent court filing that cites discussions the man had online.
Nicholas John Roske, 26, told unidentified internet users that his goal was to reverse the then-leaked draft decision of the since-overturned Roe v. Wade decision, according to an affidavit for a search warrant in the case, filed in Maryland federal court this week.
Killing one jurist could change the decisions of the court “for decades to come,” authorities said that Roske wrote, adding, “I am shooting for three.”
There’s an interesting grammatical ambiguity there, because I suppose Roske might have meant he is shooting for three decades rather than three justices. However, it’s pretty clear he meant three justices, as it was followed by “all of the major decisions for the past 10 years have been along party lines so if there are more liberal than conservative judges, they will have the power.” He needed to kill more than Kavanaugh to reliably achieve that.
The rhetoric of hatred and illegitimacy towards the conservative justices has escalated in recent years, and now that the conservatives often have a majority of votes on important issues such as Dobbs, the anger towards them is even more intense. Kavanaugh was purposely and falsely painted as a rapist, and plenty of people believe that he was. But for someone like Roske – and I doubt he is alone in this – the important thing isn’t any supposed background of Kavanaugh, although that helps fuel the hate. The important thing is Kavanaugh’s future presumed case opinions, and the most important thing is stopping him and replacing him with someone from the left.
Because SCOTUS justices are appointed for life, and Kavanaugh isn’t all that old, Koske’s reasoning (not his morality, but his reasoning) makes perfect sense: assassination of a conservative justice during the administration of a Democrat president and with a Democrat-controlled Senate would do the trick. If Koske is willing to risk martyrdom for that cause, he would accomplish a history-changing goal, helping to deliver the only branch of the government not presently controlled by the left into leftist hands. If he killed two or three conservative justices, then the goal would almost certainly be thoroughly and completely accomplished.
What apparently stopped him from going further with the Kavanaugh assassination was being spotted by “two U.S. Marshals who were part of 24-hour security provided to the justices following the leak of the draft opinion.” He left the scene as a result and ended up calling 911 and saying he wanted to kill himself. How far would he have gone had the marshals not been there is anybody’s guess, because he certainly sounds unbalanced. But being unbalanced hasn’t stopped killers before, and Roske certainly performed activities that meant his plans weren’t just in the mental realm but had become behavioral:
Prosecutors say Roske traveled from California to Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with the intent of killing him. Roske pulled up near the home in a taxi shortly after 1 a.m. on June 8 carrying a suitcase with a suitcase with a gun and ammunition, a tactical chest rig with pepper spray and a knife, a flashlight, a laser, a thermal monocular and other burglary tools…
As a general rule, receipt of the proceeds of a life insurance policy by the beneficiary is prohibited if that person has been the insured person’s murderer (see this). Most states even have explicit statutes prohibiting such collection of benefits, called “slayer statutes.” This makes sense because it’s understood that, for some cold-blooded people, the thought of receiving all that money acts as a potent motivator to murder.
But there are no slayer statutes for the assassination of SCOTUS justices, and someone who would like a certain party to benefit from such a slaying can be assured that, if the correct party is in power, there would be tremendous and far-reaching political rewards.
Maybe Congress should enact some version of the “slayer statute” for the murder of SCOTUS justices. Yes, I’m aware that will never happen. But until it does, the motive for assassination remains great, and therefore the danger remains great.
“Who leaked the draft decision?” is a question still unanswered to the public. Apart from occasionally re-raising the question myself I see no public demand or outcry to have an answer, a peculiar quiet or passivity to my simple-minded way of thinking. Where is a proper outrage from the Court? Where from the legislature? Where from the exectutive organs of justice? Nowhere? Odd, ain’t it?
My thought, following the report of this attempted assassination, was that the Senate should refuse to move a nomination by a president whose party would benefit from the change in Court makeup, at least until the following presidential election.
Glenn Beaton, at the Aspen Beat blog, has suggested that Roberts knows the leaker was one of the liberal justices and is covering up to avoid damaging the reputation of the Court.
Kate:
That would still benefit the assassin, just not as much.
It would, Neo. Even better would be for the president to nominate someone of the same judicial philosophy as the murdered justice, but that would never happen.
Republicans tend to be republicans by Democrats or often not democrats. That is to say, Dems don’t believe the other side can have legitimate opinions, be elected legitimately, or wield power legitimately when elected. It’s only democracy to them when it’s led by Democrats. They really don’t believe the other side should have a voice or ever hold power.
Squishmeister Roberts has apparently called off the puppies.
Bet money the would-be assassin is an addled rich kid with lefty progressive parents who didn’t have the energy or the stones to reel him back from the edge. Like that American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, … who was released in 2019.
@ Kate > “Glenn Beaton, at the Aspen Beat blog, has suggested that Roberts knows the leaker was one of the liberal justices and is covering up to avoid damaging the reputation of the Court.”
Glenn is not the only one, it was commonly suggested at the beginning.
However, coverups to avoid damage to reputations is how we got horrendous situations such as the Catholic Church & Penn State pedophiles, the Olympic coach rapist, and the local government ignoring the Rotherham rapist gangs: the news eventually comes out and the institutions’ reputations take an even bigger hit than if they had just repudiated and punished the criminals in the first place.
See also: hospitals covering for incompetent doctors, and bar associations for corrupt lawyers. Then there are the unions, and now the FBI and most of the federal government.
I find it hard to believe that CJ Roberts would keep his knowledge of the leaker from all the other Justices and they wouldn’t have a clue. Un-uh. Just not credible.
Fanatics do not shrink from assassination.
Trump represents an intolerable threat.
Far more in their minds than any of the S.C. Justices.
I read through the comments on Beaton’s post and found an intriguing discussion that Roberts may be the leaker himself (Beaton disagrees).
One major consideration is that the journalist who received the leak knows the source, so now there is kompromat on someone at the Court, which is not a good thing.
However, one commenter notes the ways that leaks can be done anonymously, in his own experience.
It will be interesting to see if anyone ever leaks something about the leak.
Boomers know RFK could have been President-elect… and not Nixon. But that assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, changed all that.
One SCOTUS Justice dead might have changed Court opinions by a little, or by much. But assassinating three SCOTUS Justices? No Conservative would have had a listening ear before SCOTUS for the next forty years. Forty years! We are talking from the oldest one (Thomas) to the younger ones, who were all nominated by Trump…
That’s it. He wanted to kill ALL the Trump ones. This was about more than changing the opinions of the Court. It was about killing MAGA in the Judiciary. Had he been successful, ALL Trump-nominated judges in office, anywhere in the Federal Judiciary, would have become targets by assorted Leftists.
He could have triggered a civil war.
On top of everything else, Roske is trans and goes by the name “Sophie,” according to court filings obtained by Andy Ngo. Twitter screen grab of Ngo’s tweet at the link:
https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3304723