Duane mentioned this in passing yesterday but I wanted to devote a bit more space to it. On Sunday morning a special mass was held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, DC. The Red Mass is intended to mark the beginning of the Supreme Court's new term and to "invoke God’s blessings on those responsible for the administration of justice as well as on all public officials." Several members of the Supreme Court usually attend the annual mass and an unknown number were expected to attend this year.
In advance of the mass, police were doing a security sweep of the area when they came across a green tent which had been pitched on the steps of the cathedral. There was a man inside the tent who was later identified as Louis Geri of New Jersey. He had previously been told he was not allowed in the church and officers told him to move the tent. [emphasis added]
The officer reportedly told Geri that he needed to move the tent he had erected on the stairs off church grounds. That is when Geri allegedly refused and told the officer, "You might want to stay back and call the federales, I have explosives/bombs."
A sergeant came to help and told Geri she was with the bomb squad. Court documents describe Geri as sounding "agitated" as he spoke through the tent. When the sergeant told Geri there was going to be an event and they needed him to move, he allegedly admitted that he was aware of the event before threatening to throw an explosive out of the tent.
"Do you want me to throw one out," Geri is quoted as saying in the court documents. "I'll test one out in the street? I have a hundred plus of them. If you just step back, I'll throw one in the street, no one will get hurt, there will be a hole in the street... If you just step back, I'll take out that tree. No one will get hurt, there will just be a hole where that tree used to be."
The officers then explained to Geri that if he did not leave, he would be removed against his will. To which, he allegedly said, "... several of your people are going to die from one of these."
The sergeant attempted to deescalate the situation by talking to Geri and agreed to look at something he had written. Geri unzipped the tent and handed the sergeant a manifesto of sorts.
Geri unzipped the flap of the tent and handed over nine pages torn out from his notebook titled “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives.” As he passed her the paperwork, court records show, the sergeant noticed that Geri had a butane lighter and an unknown white cap-shaped object clinched in his hand. She unzipped the rest of the flap, court records show, which angered Geri. He began reaching into a dark bag, according to court documents, and told her “Alright, if you want to do it, we’ll do it now.” The sergeant continued to ask him questions and he continued to answer, telling her he was the only one who wrote the “negotiations” he handed her and that he had a background in explosives.
But as he spoke, court records show, he began pulling out multiple capped vials containing yellow liquid with illegal explosive devices taped to them. He hovered his right thumb over the top of the butane lighter, posed to ignite it, and said “you better have these people step away or there’s going to be deaths, I’m telling you now."
Only a summary of the document Geri handed over has been released. It "expressed animosity toward the Catholic Church, Supreme Court justices, members of the Jewish faith and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."
There was a brief standoff until Geri left the tent to go to a nearby wooded area to urinate. At that point he was arrested. Police cleared his tent and found it contained 200 explosive devices of various types. They were all taken to the FBI for testing.
Authorities determined some of the vials contained nitromethane — an explosive compound often used in improvised explosive devices, including the ones deployed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people.AI Icon Geri described them to authorities as grenades that use rubber bands to secure the fuse, court records show. Others were modified bottle rockets with aluminum foil heads and treated in a pyrotechnic solution, records show. Authorities said in court documents that the devices appeared “fully functional.”
As a result of the security situation at St. Matthew’s, the mass was delayed and no members of the Supreme Court attended.
Geri is now facing 8 different charges including "manufacture or possession of a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime." Authorities haven't released a motive yet, but if Geri knew members of the Supreme Court were expected that morning and if his documents expressed anger at them, you can draw your own conclusions about why he was there.
We may have gotten lucky, once again, that no one was killed.
