From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 19, 2026
Pennsylvania’s Shapiro: Harris team asked if I’d ever been ‘a double agent for Israel’
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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro says in a new book that during his vetting by Kamala Harris’s team as a potential vice presidential candidate for the 2024 US election, he was asked whether he had at any time “been a double agent for Israel.”
Excerpts from Shapiro’s book “Where We Keep the Light” were reported on by The New York Times and The Atlantic.
The Jewish Shapiro recalls being highly offended by the question (“Was she kidding?”) and intensely uneasy with the general process, which included more questions regarding his positions that have been generally supportive of Israel.
He says that the fact he was asked this “said a lot about some of the people around [Harris].”
“I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” he says.
“These sessions were completely professional and businesslike,” Shapiro says. “But I just had a knot in my stomach through all of it.”
Harris eventually picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and the two went on to lose the general election to Donald Trump.
The Times of Israel Community.