The man who earlier this year pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is now claiming he is female, with one report saying he was calling himself a woman online at the time of the June 2022 attempt.
Nicholas Roske, 29, pleaded guilty in April to the planned killing, for which the Department of Justice wants him to be sentenced to 30 years in prison, according to the Daily Wire.
A defense filing said that Roske now goes by “Sophie Roske.”
“The case is captioned as United States v. Nicholas John Roske,” the filing said. “That name remains Ms. Roske’s legal name, and she has not asked to recaption the case. Out of respect for Ms. Roske, the balance of this pleading and counsel’s in-court argument will refer to her as Sophie and use female pronouns.”
The filing added that Roske’s lawyers said he is mentally ill and suicidal, while the Daily Wire said a source confirmed Roske was using female identities online at the time of the 2022 plot to kill Kavanaugh.
BREAKING: The man who attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 identifies as a woman and goes by the name “Sophie,” his attorneys revealed in a court filing.
Nicholas Roske was using the name “Sophie42#6535” on Discord as early as 2022, per court filings.
The… pic.twitter.com/K3YYmnQRAK
— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) September 19, 2025
Attorney General Pam Bondi said her department wants Roske punished for his crime.
“This attempt against the life of a Supreme Court Justice was an attack on the entire judicial system that cannot go unpunished,” Bondi said. “This Department of Justice condemns political violence and our prosecutors will ensure that this disturbed individual faces severe consequences for his deranged actions.”
Should he be sentenced to life in prison for trying to kill SCOTUS justices?
As noted by CBS, the prosecution’s sentencing memo said Roske hoped to kill three justices to “single-handedly alter the constitutional order for ideological ends.”
“The defendant researched; planned; procured the tools for the planned killings; traveled across the entirety of the country with those tools, including a gun; and attempted to delete online evidence of motive and intent,” prosecutors said.
“The defendant’s objective — to target and kill judges to seek to alter a court’s ruling — is an abhorrent form of terrorism and strikes at the core of the United States Constitution and our prescribed system of government,” the memo said.
Roske’s actions were “bone-chilling” and amounted to “pre-planned, cold-blooded murder,” prosectors wrote.
Roske was triggered by the release of a draft Supreme Court opinion concerning the Roe v. Wade case, which claimed that the Constitution guarantees a right to abortion. Later in June 2022, the Supreme Court would overturn the decision.
Violence linked to self-described transgender individuals and even their supporters has been in the news in recent days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10.
Not only did Kirk’s suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, have a romantic partner who was a man identifying as a woman, but in a recent video posted to X, Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said the issue of transgenderism was stirring Robinson.
“Robinson’s mother explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay and trans rights oriented,” Gray said.
In August, Robin Westman, the transgender shooter who opened fire on a Minnesota Catholic church while it was packed with schoolchildren, left behind a manifesto in which he revealed the inner trauma he caused himself, according to the New York Post.
“I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans,” Westman wrote. “I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself.”
He added, “I can’t cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.”
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