HNewsWire:

On January 6, a defendant from Pennsylvania was charged with assaulting police at the U.S. Capitol and causing civil disorder. He was given a secret plea deal and served his whole jail term without any details being written on a public court docket.

Samuel Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested by the FBI on July 26, 2021. He was later charged in a superseding indictment (pdf) with assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, civil disorder, entering and staying in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.

Even though Mr. Lazar asked to be released, he was told to stay in jail until his trial.

On March 8, 2022, Mr. Lazar took a deal from prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one felony: assaulting, refusing, or obstructing certain officers and helping and abetting. A case status report (pdf) filed on Oct. 2 said that as part of the plea deal, Mr. Lazar agreed to help federal officials with their investigation into the events of Jan. 6.

On March 17, 2023, in a meeting that was kept secret, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson gave Mr. Lazar a sentence of 30 months in prison. He was let out of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on September 13 because he had already done his time.

The Press Coalition, which is made up of The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and several other news organizations, filed a new motion (pdf) on September 29 to get access to all sealed or un-docked records in the case, including any change of plea, sentencing memoranda, and a transcript of the sentencing hearing. In May, Judge Jackson turned down a similar request.

The judge said that both the government and Mr. Lazar's lawyers agreed that the records can be made public now that he is no longer in jail. According to the status report, the Department of Justice asked for 30 days to redact sensitive parts of the paperwork in the sealed case.

The Press Coalition made a move on April 23 after national and local news outlets said that Mr. Lazar would be sentenced in March 2023 based on a plea deal. The public court docket didn't say anything about it, and there was no sign that any hearings or papers were secret.

According to the Oct. 2 progress report, the information that was missing from the original public docket (21-cr-00525) is in another case number (22-cr-071) and docket that is under seal.

On January 6, 2021, Samuel Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, gives a middle-finger greeting to the police line on the west plaza of the U.S. Capitol. (For the Epoch Times only)

On January 6, 2021, just after 1 p.m., Mr. Lazar was accused of spraying pepper spray on the police line on the west plaza of the Capitol and trying to pull down metal hurdles.

In a film from later that afternoon, Mr. Lazar talked with police officers at the barricades about what had happened."They maced us, those tyrannical pieces of [expletive], and we maced them right back, and now they're taking the building," he said, according to the FBI's statement of facts (pdf) in the case.

"They attacked the people," continued Mr. Lazar. "We have the right to fight back. [Swear word] the villains. There are times for war and times for peace."The case schedule looked normal for a case that started on January 6, and the Press Coalition was able to see early government video displays.

Case Docket Has a Hole

The docket went quiet, though, after Judge Jackson canceled the status meeting for June 13, 2022, without setting a new date.The next public docket update wasn't until March 9, 2023, when a new prosecutor was assigned to the case.If a Jan. 6 defendant accepts a plea deal, the DOJ wants them to help the FBI and federal officials with their investigation of Jan. 6.

Because they were helping the FBI, the sentence hearings for eight people who took plea deals in the Oath Keepers case were put off for up to 15 months.The Lazar case, on the other hand, might be the first time that the change of plea and the sentence were kept hidden for months.

"The Supreme Court has outlined a two-step process for deciding whether the First Amendment gives the public access to a particular court record or proceeding," wrote Charles D. Tobin, an attorney for the Press Coalition.

"First, the court must decide if there is a qualified right of public entry under the First Amendment. If so, "the record or proceeding may be closed only if closing it is necessary to protect higher values and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest," Mr. Tobin wrote, citing the 2017 case Dhiab v. Trump.

"The public docket contains no argument from the parties or finding by the court that the withholding of the sealed judicial records is essential to preserving any higher values," Mr. Tobin wrote. "There are also no public findings that show that narrowly targeted redactions wouldn't be enough to protect such interests."

In a new file on May 15, the Press Coalition included a printout from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons showing that Mr. Lazar was being held at the Federal Correction Institution in Fort Dix, N.J. The paper said that he would be free on September 13.

The Press Coalition's move was turned down by Judge Jackson on May 19, and the parties were told to file an update on the case by September 29. Bureau of Prisons online records (pdf) show that Mr. Lazar was freed on Sept. 13.

Watchman: Samuel Lazar Given Secret Plea Deal on January 6, No Public Court Record, Hitler German by Way of the DC Scum—All Hell is About to Break Loose, Law and Order Has Fallen in America—another word for this is "Tribulation"