Man faces hate crime charges over ‘hundred plus’ explosives, threats outside cathedral ahead of SCOTUS event

Washington, D.C. police say they arrested a New Jersey man with hundreds of homemade explosives and a manifesto containing “significant animosity” toward Catholics, Jews, the U.S. Supreme Court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside a cathedral hours before it was supposed to host an annual event that some justices were expected to attend.

A Metropolitan Police Department officer found Louis D. Geri, 41, camped out in a green tent in front of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. around 5 a.m. on Sunday.

Police were securing the area ahead of the event, called Red Mass, and they asked Geri to move his tent, according to an affidavit.

“You might want to stay back and call the federales,” Geri is alleged to have told an officer, according to the document filed in Washington’s criminal court. “I have explosives…”

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Louis Geri pictured in this 2022 mugshot from Arizona taken in connection with an unrelated case. (Arizona Department of Corrections)

The officer requested assistance from the MPD bomb squad. A member of it, identified as Sgt. Wishnick in court documents, approached Geri from outside his tent.

“Do you want me to throw one out?” he allegedly told her, according to the affidavit. “I’ll test one out in the street. I have a hundred plus of them.”

He told her to step back.

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Read the affidavit:

“No one will get hurt,” he allegedly continued. “There will be a hole in the street. If you just step back, I’ll take out that tree.”

But his tune allegedly changed once police told him he would be forcibly removed from the scene.

“Several of your people are gonna…die from one of these,” he replied, according to the affidavit.

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Police said Louis Geri, 41, had set up a tent on the steps outside Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. (Fox News)

Sgt. Wishnick convinced him to open the tent, where she allegedly saw him with a butane lighter “clenched” in one hand along with an “unknown white cap-shaped object,” the filing continues.

He allegedly handed her nine pages titled, “Written Negotiations for the Avoidance of Destruction of Property via Detonation of Explosives.”

“You better have these people step away or there’s going to be deaths,” Geri allegedly told her.

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The Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle pictured during Ash Wednesday services on February 22, 2023 in Washington, DC.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sgt. Wishnick notified other officers in the area as well as MPD command staff, according to the affidavit. The church’s business manager also provided police with a written notice that Geri had previously been barred from the property on Sept. 26.

Geri allegedly got up, walked over to a tree and “appeared to be urinating,” according to the affidavit. Police handcuffed and arrested him there.

The bomb squad allegedly recovered a white-capped vial filled with a yellow liquid and a lighter from his pocket.

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Police said vials of liquid and possible fireworks were found inside the suspect’s tent. (Fox News)

When they searched the tent, they found “a large cache of handmade destructive devices,” according to the affidavit, along with writings that allegedly “revealed his significant animosity toward the Catholic church, members of the Jewish faith, members of [the Supreme Court] and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement.]”

Six of the current Supreme Court justices are Catholic, and two are Jewish. The court also has a 6-3 conservative majority.

The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle is the Mother Church of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington and traces its roots back to another church building erected in 1840. The current structure was completed in the early 1900s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl (C) and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (R) talk at the conclusion of a previous Red Mass, held at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, September 30, 2012.  (REUTERS/Benjamin Myers)

The cathedral hosted the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Last year, it hosted a funeral Mass for his sister-in-law, Ethel Kennedy, which was attended by a host of dignitaries including Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. 

St. Mother Teresa visited it in the 1970s and, on different occasions, so did Popes John Paul II and Francis.

US President Joe Biden, from left, former US president Barack Obama, and former US president Bill Clinton during a memorial service for Ethel Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Robert F. Kennedy, died on October 10, 2024, at the age of 96. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The church’s Red Mass is an annual event held before the start of each year’s Supreme Court term.

Geri’s prior criminal record includes a conviction for indecent exposure in Arizona in 2021, for which he served a year in prison.

A Washington judge ordered him without bond on charges that include the alleged hate crime manufacture of a weapon of mass destruction, making threats and unlawful entry. He’s due back in court for a preliminary hearing Thursday.