SCOTUS Mass Disrupted by Arrest of Man With Explosives

A man armed with more than 200 homemade explosives was arrested outside a major Washington, DC cathedral on Sunday hours before Supreme Court justices were slated to attend the annual Red Mass, an event marking the start of the judicial term. According to court records, Louis Geri, 41, of New Jersey, was camped out in a green tent on the steps of St. Matthew's Cathedral, surrounded by an array of improvised devices ranging from molotov cocktails to modified bottle rockets, the Washington Post reports.

When police asked him to move, Geri allegedly told them to "call the federales" and warned he had explosives. Police say he held a butane lighter over multiple vials containing yellow liquid, with explosives taped to them. He allegedly told police, "You better have these people step away or there's going to be deaths, I'm telling you now." Geri also handed over pages from a notebook, which expressed hostility toward the Catholic Church, Supreme Court justices, the Jewish community, and ICE, prosecutors say.

As the standoff unfolded, Geri claimed his devices could take out a tree without harming bystanders and offered to demonstrate. Officers managed to arrest him after he left the tent to urinate. A bomb squad technician searched him and found an explosive device in his clothing, prosecutors say. Court documents state that technicians found a " large cache of homemade destructive devices" in his tent. Authorities say some vials contained nitromethane, an explosive used in notorious attacks like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI is processing the seized devices, described by officials as fully operational.

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Geri faces eight charges, including the the manufacture or possession of weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime, WUSA9 reports. He was arraigned on Monday and ordered held without bond. Geri's threats and the ongoing security situation led to the Supreme Court justices skipping this year's Red Mass. The service is held on the Sunday before the first Monday in October every year to mark the start of the court's term and "to invoke God's blessings on those responsible for the administration of justice," per the Catholic Standard, the archdiocese's newspaper.