Ilya Shapiro: Impeach the Dangerous, Soft-on-Political-Assassinations Judge Who Gave the Man Who Planned to Murder Three Supreme Court Justice Just 8 Years in Prison

And remember -- Biden judge Deborah Boardman premised giving this would-be triple Supreme Court assassins a sentence far below federal sentencing guidelines because he decided in the past couple of years that he's Akshually a Woman, and Boardman, to stick it to Trump and the conservative justices he plotted to kill, "reasoned" that if he wouldn't be allowed to serve his sentence in women's prison he should get a lesser sentence.

This is straight-up incitement to leftwing transgender assassination, letting transgender killers -- who have murdered children and adults recently -- that Love Is Love, as long as you kill the right people.

Ilya Shapiro is usually pretty milquetoast but he sees this as the winking approval of left-wing assassins that it is. (By the way, "assassin" can mean either a killer or an attempted killer. It is correct to call this man an assassin.)

Judge Deborah Boardman's lenient sentencing of Nicholas Roske--the man who plotted to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh--represents not merely poor judgment but a fundamental breach of judicial responsibility. She should be impeached.

I don't say this lightly--and I've never before called for the impeachment of a federal judge. This constitutional mechanism exists to preserve the rule of law from genuine abuses of power, not to punish decisions we disagree with. But when a judge's conduct reveals a disregard for her constitutional duty--and actively endangers the federal judiciary individually and collectively--we must consider the remedy the Framers provided.

Roske wasn't a confused protester or an online provocateur. He traveled cross-country with a gun and burglary tools, arriving at Justice Kavanaugh's home in the middle of the night on June 8, 2022, prepared to kill him. He confessed that he acted out of anger over the Court's likely reversal of Roe v. Wade. Were it not for his last-minute hesitation, the United States would have faced its first targeted killing of a Supreme Court justice.

Yet Judge Boardman imposed an eight-year sentence, far below federal guidelines and lenient even by the standards of some nonviolent offenses. Such a response to a premeditated assassination attempt on a sitting justice cannot be squared with the seriousness of the crime or the need to deter political violence.

The record also suggests that Judge Boardman's leniency was influenced, at least in part, by ideological sympathy. In her sentencing remarks, she cited Roske's mental-health struggles and his alleged transgender status as mitigating factors, noting that one of President Trump's executive orders would affect Roske's ability to receive gender-transition medical care. However sincere her concern, the courtroom is not the place for identity-based indulgence. A judge's duty is to apply the law evenhandedly, not to validate the defendant's self-expression.

This case reinforces the growing perception that America has a two-tiered justice system. Conservatives are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for political trespasses--some January 6 defendants were sentenced to more than 20 years--while left-wing violence is rationalized or excused. Had a Trump supporter armed himself to kill Justice Sonia Sotomayor, does anyone think the sentence would have been as light?

Judicial legitimacy depends on the assurance that the law applies equally, regardless of a perpetrator's ideology. If a conservative justice's would-be assassin is treated as a victim rather than a criminal because his politics or gender identity align with progressive narratives, then equal protection of the law is a hollow promise. To call for impeachment here is to reaffirm that justice must be blind.

...

Judge Boardman's conduct is doubly alarming against a backdrop of escalating political violence. The assassination of Charlie Kirk; the texted desire for the death of a political rival by Jay Jones (the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general); and the rise in ideologically motivated intimidation on and off campus reveal the thinning line between rhetoric and violence.

Judges should serve as bulwarks against that trend, not its enablers. If the law means anything, it must mean that political violence--against anyone, for any cause--is met not with sympathy, but with justice.

I've defended judicial independence my entire career. But independence is not impunity. When empathy eclipses duty and identity politics intrudes into the courtroom, judicial independence is corrupted.

Via John Sexton. Sexton quotes another jurist on the need for impeachment.

In a year of preposterous district court decisions, this one takes the cake: Boardman gave a slap on the wrist to someone who planned and attempted the worst sort of political terrorism, it seems, because of her ideological sympathies. The decision is so potentially corrosive to our civic peace that Congress would be right to consider impeachment proceedings against Boardman...

What Boardman did in the Roske sentencing is different in kind from simply bending the law to rule against a disfavored party; she seems to have openly excused political violence on ideological grounds. She did this both in her substantive sentencing decisions and in her given justifications at sentencing...

At sentencing, Boardman reportedly was concerned about whether Roske would be placed in a women's prison and given hormone replacement. She wondered openly whether Roske's claimed transgender status should affect his sentence, and why, three years after the fact, Roske is actually a threat to the public. She observed, in the end, that she was "heartened that this terrible infraction has helped the Roske family accept their daughter for who she [sic] is." Boardman even speculated that Roske's terrorism was seeded in the challenges he had being transgender in a religious family. The left-wing terrorist became the real victim once he announced he was a "she."...

The government is appealing this sentencing. But it will first be reviewed by the left-leaning Fourth Circuit.

Here's the problem: If the Fourth Circuit affirms, then the next appeal is, of course, to the Supreme Court.

Justice Kavanaugh will be pressured to recuse himself because he was the target of this psychopathic assassin.

And the assassin planned to kill two other justices -- Coney-Barrett and Alito, if memory serves.

Conservative justices do recuse themselves when they have a conflict. (Left-wing justices do not.)

So that will mean the case will be decided by the three "conservative" justices who weren't targeted -- including the liberal Roberts -- and his three left-wing allies.

posted by Ace at 01:35 PM

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