'Secret case' scrubs all public record of Jan. 6 convict's trial: report

January 6 rioter Sam Lazar of Pennsylvania was recently released from prison after two years for his role in the 2021 attack on the Capitol — but now, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, "there is no public record of any hearing at which Lazar was convicted of a federal crime, or sentenced."

Per the Inquirer, the federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press "that Lazar was released from its custody, and the basics that he'd been convicted on a charge of assaulting or resisting a police officer and had been sentenced in March to 30 months — at a hearing in Washington, D.C. that was not made public and for which there is no transcript."

However, the report notes that "Reporters for news organizations like Lancaster Online, which reported his release this summer, or the Associated Press, which this weekend published its own investigation, were told by federal authorities that any records pertaining to Lazar's case are under seal, and appeals to have those files opened up were rebuffed."

The Inquirer reports:

The confirmation of a secret case against Lazar — who emerged from the hothouse of right-wing political extremism in east-central Pennsylvania to become a key figure on Jan. 6 and a source of intense speculation from the online sleuths who dubbed him the '#facepaintblowhard' — is both troubling and intriguing at the same time.

The newspaper notes, "Troubling because the U.S. justice system must be as open and transparent to the American people as possible, and it strains credulity that the government would keep the case against Lazar secret for so long, especially after his release," and "Intriguing because" ahead of "his July 2021 arrest — even in the weeks after the violence of Jan. 6 — Lazar was often seen at Republican Party events and right-wing political rallies, sometimes with the man who would become the GOP's 2022 gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano."

According to the report, the GOP senator "has said he didn't cross police lines, has denied any other wrongdoing, and had said Lazar is just a guy he posed for a picture with" at a May 2021 political fundraiser for ex-President Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was recently indicted by an Atlanta grand jury for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Inquirer adds, "Theres no sign that Mastriano is currently being criminally investigated, and the idea that Lazar has been secretly cooperating with investigators is just speculation, for now."

Ex-United States Department of Justice official and Georgetown University law professor Randall Eliason, according to the Inquirer, "told the AP that he cannot recall a federal case ever handled in this fashion, adding that 'either there's some kind of security concern about him personally, or maybe more likely that he's cooperating in some respect that they don't want the people he's cooperating against to know about.'"