Avowed white supremacist and antisemite Hardy Lloyd has been arrested again.
Lloyd, formerly of Dormont, was taken into custody Thursday in West Virginia after the FBI filed a complaint against him in the Northern District of West Virginia.
Agents arrested him at his home in Follansbee, West Virginia, on charges of obstruction of justice, interstate threats and witness tampering regarding the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s trial.
The trial ended last week after two months of testimony when the jury imposed the death penalty on the shooter.
The FBI said Google initially alerted agents to Lloyd’s activities in March, when he began making comments on YouTube about killing “jews and cops” and referring viewers to his website.
Lloyd, who often adds the misnomer “Reverend” to his name, sent mass emails — including to members of the press — threatening Jews and others if the synagogue shooter was found guilty. Once the shooter was convicted, Lloyd threatened community members and the jury if he was sentenced to death.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville has sealed the names of jurors permanently.
The FBI said one of Lloyd’s mass emails, titled “Stickering Pgh for Robert Bowers Trial,” stated, in part: “Remember, jurors, we WILL be watching and we WILL be taking pictures of ALL cars and people who leave the courthouse. It’s 100% LEGAL to do this, too!”
Lloyd went further on his website’s “enemies” page. The complaint cites the following message:
“If anyone has the doxing info, legally, for the 70 jurors on the Richard [sic] Bowers trial in Pgh, send to us we can legally post said PUBLIC INFO as a useful guide to keep the trial honest. Oh, and we WILL be filing at country records for their names and home/work addresses to LEGALLY POST after the trial is over. Which is keeping with PA state laws regarding doxing of Jurors post trial via PUBLIC INFO!! Y’all who are on the jury, make sure to vote what you know in your heart is morally correct.
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FREE RICHARD [sic] BOWERS, CITY OF PITTSBURGH, OR ELSE THERE WILL BE ‘LEGAL’ CONSEQUENCES !!!”
In another post, Lloyd wrote, “Robert Bowers Did Pgh A Favour. Any juror who finds him guilty is guilty of anti-White racism!!”
The federal complaint against Lloyd includes a photograph he posted of individuals entering the courthouse for the synagogue shooter’s trial, as well as a collage of several victims and witnesses.
After the shooter was convicted, Lloyd posted on his website: “Taylor Swift concert. Wouldn’t it be nice if some LW [lone wolf] shot it up???”
The complaint also includes GPS and license plate information showing that Lloyd’s car was in Pittsburgh on May 29 and 30, when antisemitic and racist flyers were distributed here.
After the jury found the synagogue shooter eligible for the death penalty, Lloyd wrote, “Start shooting up synagogues!”
On Aug. 3, the FBI said, Lloyd posted again that “We warned you Pgh” and called on other “lone wolves” in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio to “target the hell” out of Jews in Pittsburgh.
Then, on Aug. 8, Lloyd issued a new post in which he called for killing Black people in Alabama and outlined plans for targeting random Jews in Pittsburgh and Austin, Texas, where he had lived before moving to West Virginia.
Lloyd has an extensive criminal history.
He was arrested in 2004, charged with killing his girlfriend in Squirrel Hill. He was acquitted of the murder but found guilty of firearm possession and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Lloyd took to the internet after his release to brag about the killing.
In 2017, he was sentenced to 13 months in prison and nine months of supervised release for using public computers at libraries in Mt. Lebanon and Dormont to order martial arts weapons and to watch videos of women being abused. He was also recorded giving the Nazi salute at a Mt. Lebanon protest and distributing flyers in the city’s East End.
Lloyd was last released from federal prison on Oct. 6, 2020, after serving a 24-month sentence for violating his probation, which prohibited him from accessing social media or communicating with anyone to promote terrorism. At the time, Lloyd posted a blog message about a free speech ban in Europe and another condemning a Pittsburgh assault weapons ban.
Lloyd moved to Austin when he was released. In 2022, the Texas Department of Public Safety offered a $1,000 reward for information leading Lloyd’s arrest after he posted a series of threatening comments online promising to carry a firearm onto the Texas State Capitol grounds.
He will be held in custody, at least until his Aug. 15 detention hearing pending his trial, according to Shawn Brokos, community security director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.
Brad Orsini, the national security adviser for the Secure Community Network, a national nonprofit dedicated to the safety and security of the American Jewish community, said Lloyd has been on the SCN’s radar for years.
Orsini served as the Pittsburgh’s federation’s security director at the time of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
He said that SCN collaborated with local Jewish federations and law enforcement in following Lloyd’s posts, emails and activities.
“The information,” Orsini said, “goes up, down and sideways. The intelligence gathering is a robust system to let every key stakeholder know and gives them the utmost situational awareness.”
Lloyd’s recent threats were unique, he said, in that they “actually doxed and targeted specific members of the community.”
Jeff Finkelstein, president and CEO of Pittsburgh’s federation, said working with SCN has made Pittsburgh safer.
“Today’s outcome is the result of longstanding close cooperation between law enforcement and our community over many years; the work of SCN and the Federation, and our work together, shows the strength of a coordinated, community-based approach,” Finkelstein said. “We appreciate the FBI’s ongoing commitment to our community, and the dedication shown each day by the members of law enforcement in their service to our country.”
Brokos said the federation is grateful for the cooperation of federal law enforcement and the United States attorney’s office.
She also credited Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.
“I want to thank the community for being so vigilant and continually reporting suspicious or concerning information to us and to law enforcement,” she said. “We received hundreds of reports relative to Hardy Lloyd over the past several months, each being a critical piece of the case that was brought before him.”
Torsten Ove contributed to this report. This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Union Progress in a collaboration supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership.
