The National Socialist Movement, a white supremacist group, holds a 2016 rally on the steps of the Capitol in Harrisburg.

PennLive.com file photo

By Steve Novak | For lehighvalleylive.com

The white supremacists gathered at a leader’s rural Pennsylvania home. They talked about their upcoming rally in Harrisburg.

They wanted to bomb it.

Their presence at the state capitol in 2016, they correctly believed, would be met by a counter-protest. One member of the Aryan Strikeforce volunteered to target the opposing demonstration with a suicide bomb.

Federal prosecutors made the new allegations this month in a court filing as five members of the militant supremacist wing, including the founder and two others who resided in the Lehigh Valley, await trial.

The filing -- which came in response to one defendant's motion to dismiss charges in a drug- and gun-running case -- also connects some defendants to a racially motivated brawl outside an Easton-area strip club and describes the Aryan Strikeforce (abbreviated ASF) as a violent group that sought to amass weapons and training for a pending race war.

“The members viewed the ASF as an actual strikeforce,” the document says, “a group of ‘street soldiers’ ready to undertake violent action in preservation of the white race.”

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Who is the Aryan Strikeforce?

The mission of the Aryan Strikeforce -- according to a screed on its now-defunct website -- involved "the preservation of our race, heritage, and our way of life." The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked their activity for at least two years through online postings, and said they strived to be a unifying force among white supremacist factions.

Federal agents posing as suppliers of drugs and firearms infiltrated the group in late 2016 and early 2017. Five members of this group were arrested in May following a federal investigation into their activities, one that culminated in a raid of leader Josh "Hatchet" Steever's apartment on South Main Street in Phillipsburg.

Charged are Steever, strike force President Henry Lambert Baird, 49, of Allentown; Sergeant-at-arms Connor Drew Dykes, 20, of Silver Spring, Maryland; Jacob Mark "Boots" Robards, 40, of Bethlehem; and Justin Daniel "Rocko" Lough, 26, of Waynesboro, Virginia.

Lough through his attorney in January filed a motion to dismiss the case against him.

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A screenshot of the photo page on the now-defunct Aryan Strikeforce website.

To convince the federal judge in Williamsport to uphold the charges, the government cited specific examples of the Aryan Strikeforce's plans, hierarchy and history.

Members wear patches and tattoos, and communicated through what appears to be a foreign-based social media network, prosecutors said. Citing former strike force President Ronald “Dozer” Pulcher, of Potter County, Pennsylvania, the government says all recruits take a blood oath and a pledge of loyalty requiring them to spill blood on the group’s behalf.

Though several members face charges related to the manufacture, possession or distribution of narcotics, the group itself allegedly does not condone the use of drugs, but sees them as a way to afford weapons for itself.

The Aryan Strikeforce is considered "an elite division" within Combat 18, a violent faction of white supremacists affiliated with the British group Blood and Honour and responsible for criminal acts including arson in the 1990s in the United Kingdom, where it was founded, the U.S. government's filing said.

The 18 in Combat 18 allegedly stands for the first and eighth letters of the alphabet — A and H, initials for Adolph Hitler.

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A protester's glasses reflect the Capitol as a white supremacist group, the National Socialist Movement, holds a rally Nov. 05, 2016, in Harrisburg.

PennLive.com file photo

The Harrisburg plot

Strike force members including Steever, the founder from Phillipsburg, would regularly head to Pulcher’s Potter County property to talk about their plans, prosecutors allege.

The plot to bomb the Harrisburg rally was allegedly hatched during one such meeting there in the fall of 2016, ahead of a demonstration held that November.

One strike force member had a life-threatening illness and was willing to blow himself up with a bomb that could be concealed in an oxygen bottle he carried, the government said, citing cooperating witnesses.

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PennLive.com file photo

On Nov. 5, 2016, about 30 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement went ahead with their rally on the Pennsylvania Capitol steps and were met by some 200 counter-protesters.

A PennLive.com report described the entire event as "barely controlled chaos" — white supremacists raised their arms in Nazi salutes, waved KKK and Confederate flags and shouted "white power" while masked counter protesters shouted them down, and hurled firecrackers and insults at police keeping the groups separated.

No bomb went off. The government’s filing does not say what stopped that plot.

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MORE: PennLive's photos of the 2016 white supremacist rally in Harrisburg

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Easton brawl

That December, the strike force founder from Phillipsburg and the group’s then-president from Allentown allegedly went to an Easton-area strip club looking for a woman who threatened the group.

Pulcher, the former president who was arrested two months prior on charges of growing marijuana and weapons possession, said members should “hospitalize her” and do it “for our honor,” according to the government’s court filing.

Steever and Baird went to Spanky’s East in Wilson to find the woman, but ended up in a brawl in the parking lot. Steever was thrown out after allegedly calling a group of black men at the bar a racial epithet, then is said to have pulled a knife on the men as they exited.

Steever, who was wearing a strike force jacket, was bludgeoned with a rock.

No one was charged, but police said it was clear Steever had been looking for a fight. "He was standing up in the middle of the bar doing a 'Heil Hitler' salute. That was instigating," Wilson Detective Jason Hillis told the Morning Call.

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Josh "Hatchet" Steever, the founder of the Aryan Strikeforce, resided in Phillipsburg before his April 2017 arrest.

Facebook screenshot

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MORE: Lehigh Valley hate groups active in 2017

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Acquiring weapons

Most Aryan Strikeforce members cannot legally own firearms due to prior criminal histories, the government noted in its court brief. But they allegedly sought to acquire weapons any way possible.

That included via the Internet and direct sales. Witnesses allegedly reported hearing discussions of running firearms. Baird himself admitted to purchasing a revolver from someone in Allentown, the document said.

Before Pulcher’s arrest, the meetings at his home usually involved shooting guns, the federal filing alleged. That seemed to fit in with Combat 18’s request that Steever set up “service units” to take on assignments and get weapons training, in which Lough, Dykes, Robards, Davis and Baird all agreed to participate, authorities say.

“One of ASF’s stated goals was to procure more firearms and weapons in preparation for a race war,” the government’s court filing said.

And that is how federal agents infiltrated the group.

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Dozens of federal agents raid Josh Steever's home at 487 S. Main St. in Phillipsburg the morning of April 13, 2017.

Tim Wynkoop | Lehighvalleylive.com contributor

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On at least four occasions in 2016 and ’17, the Aryan Strikeforce allegedly participated in drug- and gun-running operations with FBI agents undercover as Combat 18 members.

The strike force was told they could make money for their own weapons purchases if they helped with logistics and served as “muscle” — or security — during the transport of contraband that included up to 16 pounds of meth and parts for AR-15 rifles.

Lough and the others are said to have participated willingly as self-avowed members of the Aryan Strikeforce, leading to their arrest in April 2017.

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MORE: The white supremacists next door -- How feds infiltrated Aryan Strikeforce

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Awaiting trial

Lough has asked that the charges be dismissed. Infiltration is permissible, Lough’s attorney said in a motion filed in January, but government agents cannot “manufacture” crime — in other words, if a defendant didn’t intend to commit a crime, the undercover agents cannot force them to do so.

However, in the government’s response filed this month, they say the agents “simply provided them with the opportunity” to raise money for Aryan Strikeforce operations, and the defendants took it.

The trial of all five is to be held at the federal court in Williamsport and after several delays is currently scheduled to begin in May.

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Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.