Pearl-Clutching Cognetti’s Corruption Hypocrisy
Earlier today, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti clutched her pearls while desperately trying to twist Rob Bresnahan’s words out of context to accuse him of using information gained in Congress to trade stocks, something Bresnahan has been unequivocal in saying is not true.
Cognetti even claimed today, “Rob Bresnahan recruited me to this office during the spring and summer when it became clear from his financial disclosures that he was trading on his votes.”
That is quite the recollection from Mayor Cognetti. You know what else was happening during the “spring and summer”? Cognetti was posting selfies with Nancy Pelosi on her Instagram page. Pelosi, as eagle-eyed reporters may recall, amassed nearly $130 million in stock profits during her time in Congress.
And since the press corps in Northeastern Pennsylvania has shown interest in stories reported by Politico’s Daniel Lippman, they may also want to revisit another Lippman report from just two weeks ago. That report detailed how Mayor Cognetti used her official position to call a special session in order to ram through a sweetheart deal using taxpayer funds for the City of Scranton to purchase a building from her political donors.
Enjoy!
Pennsylvania Dem candidate’s bank ties come under scrutiny in top House race
POLITICO
Daniel Lippman
Republicans are poised to make the Democratic mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania’s support for a local bank a top issue in one of the nation’s most competitive House races, Daniel L. reports.
While Mayor Paige Cognetti has hit her opponent Rep. Rob Bresnahan over his stock trading while in office, she is now facing scrutiny for helping secure a multimillion-dollar state grant for a new Fidelity Bank headquarters at the same time her uncle-in-law sat on the board of the company.
She also received $14,600 in campaign contributions from Fidelity board members months before getting the city to purchase Fidelity’s old Scranton branch building last year.
“By the end of the campaign, each and every voter in Northeast Pennsylvania will be acutely aware that Paige is an unelectable, corrupt, poll-constructed fraud,” Reilly Richardson, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement to PI when asked about the reporting.
[…]
Cognetti has served as mayor since 2020 and in her 2019 campaign, she ran on fighting political corruption within the local Democratic apparatus, using the campaign slogan “Paige Against the Machine.” One of her top issues she’s using against Bresnahan is his many Wall Street transactions of last year, including the sale of Pennsylvania health care-related bonds and stock in Medicaid providers around the time he voted on Medicaid cuts. Bresnahan’s team has said his financial adviser did all the trading without his prior knowledge, but he has since suspended the activity.
In 2022, Fidelity Bank, which has been in the region for more than a century, announced it had bought the historic Electric Building in downtown Scranton but left it vacant because it needed extensive renovations. In 2024, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro gave Fidelity a $5 million grant to help renovate the building, which is expected to eventually house 165 Fidelity employees. In 2022, after they purchased the building and were counting on state government support for a renovation, Fidelity thanked Cognetti for her support for the project, calling it “vital to making the Bank’s vision a reality.”
The next year, on April 29, 2025, all nine members of Fidelity’s board of directors at the time, including her uncle-in-law and Fidelity board secretary John Cognetti, gave $1,500 each to Cognetti’s mayoral campaign, according to Pennsylvania campaign finance records.
[…]
Seven months later after the donations, council members learned that Cognetti had added an item to the budget requesting the city purchase Fidelity’s old headquarters to convert it into an extension of City Hall, despite a recent costly renovation. Cognetti’s advocacy for the project came after the CEO of Fidelity said the city was interested in buying the building. The extension will be used for public safety purposes including a Police Department real-time crime center facility; Scranton’s police chief called the project “a gold mine for us” because of its potential to improve public safety.
Two members of the City Council expressed major opposition to the purchase, with Mark McAndrew saying: “If I was to vote yes, then I would vote yes to a conflict and a behavior that I am uncomfortable with.” Council member Thomas Schuster raised questions about the fiscal responsibility of the purchase, asking about the loss of tax revenue from the building, a possible pricey renovation and uncertain operating costs. Incoming City Council member Sean McAndrew also voiced concerns about the purchase. The city ended up purchasing the buildingfor slightly lower than the assessed value. The proposal to buy the building ultimately passed the City Council by only a 3-2 margin.
[…]
Read more here.