Kavanaugh neighbors question media's muted response to threat on his life: 'I thought it was pretty minimal'

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Panel: Media largely silent on Kavanaugh assassination attempt

UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo and Newsbusters managing editor Curtis Houck join 'Fox News @ Night' to weigh in on the lack of coverage from major media networks over the assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Just over a week ago, 26-year-old Nicholas Roske arrived at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home with designs on killing him and then himself. For much of the mainstream media, the story ended shortly after, when the would-be assailant gave himself up without harming anyone.

However, to some of Kavanaugh's neighbors in the upscale Chevy Chase suburbs bordering Washington, D.C., the tale's hardly over.

Angles for coverage around the disturbing incident abound, with liberal protests continuing outside the conservative judge's home ahead of potentially landmark Supreme Court decisions in the coming weeks, and nagging questions about how Roske – armed with a gun, ammo, zip ties and pepper spray – came that close to an assassination that would have rocked the country. There are social issues at play too, as Roske told police he was upset in part over Kavanaugh's potentially scale-tipping opinions on abortion rights and gun laws.

"That was surprising to me. I thought it was pretty minimal," a neighbor of Kavanaugh's told Fox News Digital of the media's coverage. "I thought it would have been a bigger story. It kind of went away almost immediately."

 A man was arrested near Justice Kavanaugh's home in Maryland last week for allegedly threatening violence toward the justice. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

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Developments have continued in the investigation, with police revealing this week that Roske saw federal marshals by Kavanaugh's home early last Wednesday morning, and then texted his sister before abandoning his plan to kill Kavanaugh and himself. According to police, his sister convinced him to call 911 and give himself up, which he soon did.

No one was hurt in the end, but there are scars for the neighbors who told Fox News Digital they are already weary of multiple, noisy, obscenity-laden, "obnoxious" protests each week, with one fearing that Roske's actions could embolden another attacker. Liberals are fuming that Kavanaugh will be among the votes that could soon overturn Roe v. Wade, as indicated by the leak of an opinion draft to Politico last month, and some of them are letting him – and the people who happen to live near him – know it.

"People are very nervous," another Chevy Chase resident told Fox News Digital. "In terms of our actual neighborhood, it's very unnerving. And people definitely feel upset, and they're worried that this is going to give an idea to someone else, you know, to attempt something similar or be disruptive in another way that, you know, involves violence. I think we're all on edge about that."

But the threat already has begun to feel forgotten to some of them.

While the Washington Post has continued to cover the story, as it happened in the paper's backyard, the New York Times hasn't written about Roske since June 8, and it buried the initial story on page 20 in the following day's print edition. 

USA Today left it off its front page the following morning as well, as did the Chicago Tribune. The Sunday talk shows on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN last weekend didn't make a single mention of the incident, and the networks have made scant mention of the threat this week, except in the context of a bill passed in Congress to increase protections for families of Supreme Court justices.

Even the night of the incident, the far-left group Ruth Sent Us said it would continue to protest outside Kavanaugh's home, as well as that of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

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"It's not going to end, it seems like," the first Kavanaugh neighbor said. "This is a private neighborhood… I think it's very disrespectful. This is a neighborhood, an escape from bitter D.C. politics."

That neighbor agreed with the sentiments from some conservatives that the media would treat the Kavanaugh threat far more gravely if a liberal justice on the Court had been targeted in an assassination attempt, or one of those justice's neighbors were subjected to constant right-wing protests and noise. 

A drumline marched outside of Kavanaugh's house after an alleged assassination attempt. (Fox News)

"That would be fair to say," they said. "There's a critical difference between protesting in front of private residences, versus in front of a public building… I do think that because it's specifically him, I do think that there is a [double standard.]"

"You have to wonder about that and feel that there is some kind of, you know, a double standard at work here," the second Chevy Chase resident told Fox News Digital. "And that there isn't a focus on it, and it is an uncomfortable situation."

Kavanaugh was perhaps the most scrutinized Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas during his wrenching confirmation hearings in 2018, with mainstream media outlets digging into his high school yearbook photos and teenaged exploits following Christine Blasey Ford's uncorroborated sexual assault allegation against him. That exhaustive coverage also included showing where he lived on television.

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"I don't believe that there is another nominee to the court who had their home and their neighborhood placed in the public domain in this way previously. And so this is something that goes back to the beginning where this was a sustained effort to show where he was and what neighborhood," the second resident said. "The media helped create this vulnerability, by the way, that they have covered this… And, you know, there's a definite responsibility there for the consequences that arise from that."

Asked if they felt the normalization of protests of Supreme Court judges at their private homes had contributed to an environment where Roske felt compelled to act, the first neighbor agreed.

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"Yes, yes, yes," they said. "This happening is kind of enabling people to do these things, thinking that it's OK to do it… But yes, I do worry about that with my [family]… It's not just Kavanaugh who is dealing with this. You know, there's other people's lives, private people who have nothing to do with this, that are held prisoner to this twice a week. Or like I said, by the random picketers that come by or this young man who flew from California just to do what he had planned."

"You have to wonder about that and feel that there is some kind of, you know, a double standard at work here," the second Chevy Chase resident told Fox News Digital. "And that there isn't a focus on it. And it is an uncomfortable situation."

A third Kavanaugh neighbor was unsparing about the media, comparing it unfavorably to some in the press who downplayed violent protests and riots in 2020 following the police murder of George Floyd.

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"They want to cover up when their radicals do something bad," another Kavanaugh neighbor said. "Like when with what we saw with the riots [in 2020]… all of that was covered up under peaceful protesting… But this, they can't really cover it up. They can't say, ‘Oh, it was just a mostly peaceful intruder.’ They have to say it never happened because there is no positive spin on this story."

The neighbor added there would be little tolerance from the press for conservatives hectoring the neighbors of Justice Sonia Sotomayor or soon-to-be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, for instance, and they fretted over what this kind of personal engagement means for the Supreme Court's impartiality.

Demonstrators protest outside of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, May 7, 2022. (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

"It would not be accepted," they said. "They would enforce the law that you cannot intimidate a justice, and you can't protest to try and change a verdict, and they would say, ‘Look at what these radicals are doing.’"

The presence of protesters hasn't completely escaped the attention or scrutiny of the mainstream press; on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed derision.

"Even if it's legal to do, it's just not the best, most effective way to do it… I think most Americans seeing people protesting outside a home like the Kavanaughs or somebody else, they got kids inside, they're thinking, ‘What are they doing?’ They’re hurting the cause," Scarborough said, with Brzezinski adding she was "so uncomfortable" with it. 

No matter who is in office or holding a position of authority, "we should all be horrified" that this kind of political violence nearly happened, the second neighbor said.

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"That should be so beyond any level of acceptability in this country that it shouldn't even be a discussion point," they said.