Nicholas John Roske was identified as the armed man who was arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. The 26-year-old had made a plan to kill the judge to “give his life purpose,” prosecutors said on Wednesday. 

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The name was released via an unsealed arrest affidavit. Roske was arrested by the Montgomery County Police Department at about 1:50 AM near Kavanaugh’s home. He is charged with attempting to kill or kidnap a US judge, Maryland federal court’s records show.  

The man from Simi Valley, California was carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties. He was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi just after 1 AM outside Kavanaugh’s home in a Washington suburb and was spotted by two US Deputy Marshals outside of the residence.

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Threats have been made against the Court and judges since the leak of a draft memo that indicated the court, including Kavanaugh, may overturn Roe v. Wade. The court affidavit alleges that that leak drove Roske’s anger. He was also angry because he thought Kavanaugh would help loosen gun control laws after mass shootings. 

Roske, in a criminal complaint, has been accused of “attempts to kidnap or murder, or threatens to assault, kidnap or murder a United States Judge, to wit: a current Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”

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The court currently is weighing a challenge to New York’s requirements for getting a permit to carry a gun in public, a case that could make it easier to be armed on the streets of New York and other large cities.

Roske was only apprehended after he called 911 in Montgomery County, Maryland, and said he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to kill Kavanaugh, having found the justice’s address online. Roske was still on the phone when Montgomery County police arrived on the scene, according to the affidavit.

“This kind of behavior is obviously behavior we will not tolerate,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Wednesday. “Threats of violence and actual violence against the justices of course strike at the heart of our democracy and we will do everything we can to prevent them and to hold people who do them accountable.”

President Joe Biden praised authorities for quickly apprehending the man, deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in an email.