Nikolas Roske showed up at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home with a gun, burglary tools, and zip ties. Prosecutors asked for 30 years. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman gave him eight.

Now the DOJ is appealing to the 4th Circuit, calling the sentence "woefully insufficient."

Roske pleaded guilty in April 2025 to charges including attempted assassination and domestic terrorism. On October 3, Judge Boardman held a six-hour sentencing hearing, spending two full hours explaining her reasoning for handing down a sentence barely a quarter of what prosecutors requested. She also imposed lifetime supervised release after the prison term.

Boardman's reasoning leaned heavily on Roske's mental health. She referenced gender dysphoria and depression, stating that "Sophie's depression remained unresolved at least in part due to her gender dysphoria." Boardman used Roske's preferred name and pronouns throughout the proceedings — a detail that became its own controversy when a Trump executive order later mandated transgender women be held at male-only federal facilities.

The judge acknowledged she couldn't be certain what would have happened without law enforcement present at Kavanaugh's residence. "We simply do not know what would have happened if the marshals had not been there," Boardman said. She added that "law enforcement presence may have moved the needle for her, but there is insufficient evidence before me that the presence of law enforcement was the only reason she abandoned her plans."

So the judge's own words admit Roske might have followed through if the marshals hadn't been standing there. And the sentence for that is eight years.

Federal and state defense lawyer Richard Finci weighed in on the transgender angle, telling Hot Air, "My view is that it had a limited effect on the final outcome. It's not as if Judge Boardman let her walk because she is transgender." Ohio State law professor Douglas Berman, who runs the "Sentencing Law and Policy" blog, noted that Boardman "was very conscious in building the record in explaining what she was doing."

Careful record-building is nice. But the record she built is this: a man traveled across the country with a firearm and tools to break into a sitting Supreme Court justice's home, confessed to planning an assassination, pleaded guilty to domestic terrorism — and walked away with a sentence shorter than what some January 6 defendants received for trespassing.

We watched grandmothers who wandered through the Capitol get years in federal prison. We watched nonviolent offenders sit in solitary for months awaiting trial. The full weight of the federal justice system came down on people whose worst crime was being in the wrong building at the wrong time.

An armed man with a plan to murder a Supreme Court justice got the judicial equivalent of a stern talking-to.

The DOJ's appeal to the 4th Circuit is the right move. Prosecutors asked for 30 years because the facts demanded 30 years. Eight years for an assassination attempt doesn't send a message about the rule of law. It sends a message about which targets the system takes seriously.

Thirty years was the ask. Eight was the answer. The gap between those two numbers tells you everything about who the courts are protecting — and who they aren't.