Another day, another report of a Republican attempting to drug and sexually assault a woman.
This time, according to the Northampton Patch, it was the former Township Supervisor of Northampton, Pennsylvania, Lawrence Jay Weinstein, who was arrested yesterday along with his girlfriend, Kelly Drucker, on multiple felony charges. Prosecutors say that the couple laced a woman’s wine with high proof alcohol to get her drunk, and then took pictures of her naked while she was passed out.
The actions led the prosecutors to charge the couple with false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, recklessly endangering another person and criminal conspiracy, as well as violations of the Pennsylvania Wiretap Act.
Weinstein and Drucker allegedly began planning their assault a year ago, exchanging text messages outlining the plot to lure the woman back to Drucker’s home where they had installed a webcam in the bathroom.
“Don’t let her go to the bathroom until she gets back to your place,” Weinstein texted Drucker in one message, according to the District Attorney’s office.
Last November, Drucker and the victim met at a Mexican restaurant with Weinstein texting his girlfriend instructions throughout the evening.
“Keep sober so you can make it happen and aren’t too drunk to win,” the DA’s office said one of Weinstein’s texts read.
Weinstein allegedly told Drucker to keep the woman drinking and ask her questions about sex once she got her back to her home. The victim told police that she remembered going to dinner and noticing that her wine didn’t taste right, but has no memory after mentioning the funny taste of her drink.
Before long, the woman had gotten sick and passed out in Drucker’s bathroom. Weinstein messaged Drucker to don a pair of camera glasses and start to take photos.
“Get her naked and get [sic] door open,” he texted, according to the DA’s office.
Detectives later found the photos Drucker took of the unconscious victim while she was in the bathroom. The police were tipped off to the scheme when someone found suspicious messages on a phone that once belonged to Drucker.
In the course of their investigation, they discovered more photos on an iPad that showed Weinstein sexually assaulting a different unconscious woman in 2012. When police contacted the prior victim, she told them that she had no memory of the incident but she most definitely did not consent to Weinstein taking photos of or touching her.
A district judge has set bail for both defendants at $300,000 and they’ll face preliminary hearings next week. Weinstein has served in local township government since 2001 and only resigned from the township’s Supervisory Board last month, ostensibly for “personal reasons,” apparently very personal reasons.
Republicans market themselves as the party of law and order and right-wing religious values that border on extremism. With politicians like Weinstein joining multiple other similar offenders in their midst — including the predator-in chief — they look more and more like the party of extreme hypocrisy.
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Original reporting by Doug Gross, Patch Staff at Northampton Patch.
