The LuLac Edition #5, 744, August 18th, 2026

 

THE GOP LIE MACHINERY IN HIGH GEAR

REPUBLICANS PORTRAY SCRANTON AS HOTBED OF VIOLENT CRIME, BUT ANALYSIS

SHOWS DECLINE

WVIA’s Borys Krawczeniuk and Sarah Cinto report that for months, Republicans have portrayed Scranton as a hotbed of out-of-control crime  and blamed Democratic congressional candidate and city Mayor Paige Cognetti for it.

Combined, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s campaign and a national group that helps Republican congressional candidates have sent almost 30 emails since September accusing Cognetti of presiding over a crime wave.

“For years, Mayor Cognetti has minimized rising violence, limited the ability of police to enforce the law, and ignored clear warnings about gang activity and increased homicide rates,” Bresnahan campaign manager Peter Brath said in a Dec. 10 news release.

Cognetti, challenging Bresnahan for the 8th Congressional District seat, sharply pushes back. She points to the city adding five more police officers in the midst of a spike in homicides and gang violence in 2024, spending more than $5 million to upgrade police equipment and training, and plans for a new police command center next to City Hall.

“I am a mayor and a mom. I became mayor just two weeks after having my first daughter,” she said in a recent interview. “So, my life in the last six and a half years has been 24 hours a day thinking about public safety as mayor and as somebody who's raising a family here in Scranton.”

She also pointed to crime statistics.

“The stats show that violent crime is trending down in Scranton. Those are the facts, and we will keep doing our job of investing,” Cognetti said in a recent interview.

“The stats show that violent crime is trending down in Scranton. Those are the facts, and we will keep doing our job of investing,” Cognetti said in a recent interview.

WHAT CRIME STATISTICS SHOW

For purposes of this analysis, serious crimes include homicide/murder, aggravated assault, simple assault, rape, robbery, burglary, thefts from either a vehicle or otherwise, arson and human trafficking as defined by the state uniform crime reporting system. The system includes non-negligent manslaughter under murder and negligent manslaughter separately. Scranton has not reported any negligent manslaughter. The FBI considers murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft and motor vehicle theft and human trafficking "the nation's premier indicator of the nature of crime in the United States."

The WVIA News analysis includes simple assaults as serious crimes because the state crime reports do and because Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll included them in data he provided.

Based on this definition, publicly posted FBI and state crime statistics show serious crime in Scranton down 4.1% since the beginning of 2021, Cognetti’s second year in office, through 2025, the last year with complete statistics available.

Carroll defends Cognetti’s attention to crime and says the 2021-2025 period represents the most reliable indicator of where crime stands because of potential reporting errors in 2019 and 2020, the year she took office.

If either 2019 or 2020 is used as the basis for comparison, the results differ.

If the comparison years are 2019 and 2025, the most recent year with complete data, the publicly posted statistics show serious crime dropped 39.1%.

If the comparison years are 2020 and 2025, the publicly posted statistics show serious crime up 11.2%. That’s due at least partly to record low serious crime numbers in 2020, the year of COVID-19, when crime dropped in many places. The 1,771 recorded serious crimes in Scranton in 2020 were the fewest between 2013 and 2025.

Comparing Cognetti’s first six years in office (2020-2025) and the six years before that (2014-2019), serious crimes dropped 36.6%.

Crime in the campaign

Crime has emerged as a major issue in the campaign for the 8th Congressional District seat between Bresnahan and Cognetti. That’s mainly because the National Republican Campaign Committee, which helps the party’s congressional candidates, and the Bresnahan campaign try to portray Cognetti as indifferent to rising crime. Among the crimes they highlight:

A Dec. 9, 2025, machete attack in a downtown apartment building. A man who lived in a neighboring apartment is accused of slashing two women and a service dog to death and seriously wounding another. The NRCC dubbed the mayor "Machete Cognetti" to highlight Scranton crimes.

“This tragic double homicide is not an isolated incident, but rather a pattern of conduct by Mayor Cognetti where public safety has not been prioritized,” Brath said in a news release the day after the machete attack.

Portraying her as "Paige Cripnetti" because she posed for a picture posted on Facebook with two men who operated a hookah lounge in North Scranton and were later arrested by Scranton police as part of a ring tied to the notorious gang, the Crips.

“Got Gangs?” billboards bought by Bresnahan’s campaign ask, referring to the arrests and the photo, first publicized by Breitbart, a conservative online publication.

“Charges like that (Machete Cognetti & Paige Cripnetti) are just absurd," Cognetti said. "They are coming from a person who has made dishonesty his calling card. It's been astonishing to me that Rob's name is on those himself, that he wants to associate with those types of slanders.”

Cognetti said she had no idea who the men were when she posed for the picture.

“I am the mayor of a city of 80,000 people. I go to events every single day. I get asked to take pictures with thousands of people, and as mayor, my job is to participate in the community,” she said. “Any mayor is going to take pictures with folks, and the Bresnahan campaign seems pretty desperate in making (it) a cornerstone of some of their spending.”

Cognetti pointed out the police department she oversees arrested the two men and the machete attacker.

“It is very clear what my record on crime and public safety is. I have a very long record of that at this point,” she said. “We see the Scranton Police Department solving crimes. They have the tools to do that. We cannot prevent every crime, but Scranton PD immediately responds, solves these crimes so quickly, and we've also been putting in the work over these years to bolster the partnerships that help prevent crime and to help us solve those crimes.  (WVIA News) 

 

TODD BLANCHE MAKES HISTORY

ADMITS TO BEING A LYING ATTORNEY GENERAL

Attorney General Todd Blanche fiercely argued there’s “nothing inconsistent” about his vow to protect police officers and President Donald Trump’s controversial pardons for violent rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” things got testy between Blanche and moderator Kristen Welker after she questioned how Trump’s decision to pardon the Capitol attackers, including 172 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, on his first day in office is “consistent with your pledge to always protect law enforcement.” 

“There’s nothing inconsistent about that,” Blanche reponded. “Any president’s pardon powers are not limited. So when I say and when this Department of Justice says and when the FBI says, like we’re saying, and every U.S. attorney is saying that if you assault law enforcement, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, that is absolutely what President Trump expects, absolutely what I expect of our prosecutors.”

He added, “That’s completely separate from any president’s ability to pardon.”

Blanche made the remarks after Welker played a clip of him swearing during an appearance with Trump at the Nassau County Police Academy on Friday that if anyone touches a federal law enforcement officer in any inappropriate manner, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice will “prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”  -

Welker doubled down by asking him directly if he believes it was “wrong to pardon the people who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 given that you have vowed to protect law enforcement,” noting that Trump “did the opposite of that effectively.”

“Every attorney general vows to protect law enforcement, including me,” Blanche replied. “And so I’m not opining or in any way saying what President Trump did is wrong. Absolutely not. By the way, President Biden —”

Welker interjected, “Isn’t it inconsistent with what you said, though?”

“Absolutely not,” Blanche said. “There’s a difference —

“Is it inconstant with your pledge?” Welker asked again.

“No. There’s a difference,” he argued before telling Welker that it’s a different story if a president later chooses to issue a pardon to someone because it’s the president’s “right under our Constitution.” He then pointed the finger at former President Joe Biden.

Blanche LIED to the committee, twisting his lies into legal, self serving logic. He is worse than a dine store lawyer who is NOT serving the public but his lord and master the pig President. Why do people hate lawyers at times? 

From lying son of a bitches LIKE HIM. 

But this is the Republican way.  (NBC, LuLac)