Rep. Chip Roy moves to impeach judge over Kavanaugh assassin

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, announced Tuesday that he filed articles of impeachment last week against U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee who gave a lenient sentence earlier this month to the trans-identifying, would-be assassin of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“Our nation’s judicial system is structured to administer proper and equal treatment under the law; it is not a system where a member of the Judiciary is to allow their personal feelings or political ideology to influence their decision-making — oftentimes resulting in more criminals on the street,” Roy said in a statement.

Boardman’s office declined to comment when contacted by The Christian Post for a response to Roy’s claims.

On Oct. 3, Boardman sentenced Nicholas John Roske, a 29-year-old who now identifies as “Sophie,” to eight years in prison and lifetime supervised release for attempting to kill Kavanaugh in June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to hand down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The court’s landmark abortion decision had been leaked to the press weeks before it was officially announced. 

Roske, who flew from California to Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland, was arrested at the associate justice’s house, where he turned himself in to police and was found carrying a gun, knife and pepper spray. He admitted to wanting to murder Kavanaugh because of the Dobbs ruling, pleading guilty earlier this year to attempting to assassinate a U.S. justice.

Investigators found that he had planned the assassination meticulously and attempted to cover up electronic evidence of his motives.

The U.S. Department of Justice had recommended a minimum 30-year prison sentence for Roske, but Boardman handed down a sentence that aligned with the penalty sought by Roske’s attorneys. The sentence followed a memo submitted to Boardman that claimed the defendant’s longstanding gender identity and mental health issues justified the lighter sentence.

“I take into consideration the conditions of pre-trial confinement and the fact that [Roske] is a transgender woman and will be sent to a male-only facility,” Boardman said during the sentencing.

Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized Boardman’s sentence as “woefully insufficient” and has vowed to appeal.

Roy similarly dismissed Boardman’s sentence as inadequate, saying in a statement that she “deserves to be impeached for her absurd 8-year sentence of a man convicted of attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family.”

“Boardman unequivocally based this weak sentence on the attempted assassin’s ‘gender identity,’ as the attempted assassin expressed that he views himself as a woman,” he said. “Instead of doing what the Judiciary calls for and sentencing this man to the base 30-year sentence recommended by the Department of Justice, Judge Boardman purposefully allowed this man off easy.”

Roy’s impeachment resolution, which originally had 12 other Republican co-sponsors, accuses Boardman of indulging “the delusional fiction that Roske — a biological male — has become a woman.” The resolution also claims the judge allowed her personal feelings about the issue to influence her sentencing.

The resolution, which says Boardman is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors and of conduct that violates the constitute [sic] standard of good behavior,” suggests Boardman failed to consider the methodical nature of Roske’s crimes and his extensive research to locate the private residences of multiple U.S. Supreme Court justices and how to infiltrate them without detection.

“Judge Boardman violated her oath of office by not administering her sentencing ‘impartially’ and by not upholding the ‘good behavior’ that Judges must abide by,” Roy said. “Judge Boardman should be impeached swiftly and without reservation.”