Pennsylvania’s Shapiro: Harris team asked if I was ever ‘a double agent for Israel’

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro wrote 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 by her team 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 on Sunday. The book will be released on January 27.

Shapiro, who is Jewish, recalled being highly offended by the question by former White House counsel Dana Remus (“Was she kidding?”) and intensely uneasy with the general process, which included more questions regarding his positions that have been generally supportive of Israel, according to the book.

“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” Remus asked, according to Shapiro. “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

Additionally, Shapiro said he was asked if he would apologize for comments criticizing antisemitism at anti-Israel protests on university campuses that had erupted that year due to the war in Gaza.

“I believe in free speech, and I’ll defend it with all I’ve got,” Shapiro said. “Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful.”

He wrote that the fact he was asked these questions “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,” the book read.

“These sessions were completely professional and businesslike,” Shapiro wrote. “But I just had a knot in my stomach through all of it.”

Former US president Joe Biden’s antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt and her deputy Aaron Keyak issued separate statements condemning Harris’s campaign over the line of questioning revealed by Shapiro.

“The more I read about [Shapiro’s] treatment in the vetting process, the more disturbed I become. The questions to him, I repeat, are why they needed a special envoy on antisemitism. These questions were classic antisemitism,” Lipstadt tweeted.

“This report is extremely distressing. When vetted by the White House for my position as special envoy, I was not asked anything akin to this. Had I been, I would have responded that the question is an example of why an envoy is necessary. It is classic antisemitism,” she added in a separate post.

“The minimum demand of Jews in the United States and our allies — even those in public service — is to simply be treated like any other American, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or race. That Governor Josh Shapiro wrote that he was asked if he was a double agent of the world’s only Jewish state is an antisemitic inquiry,” Keyak wrote.

“During my vetting process, I faced questions in a classified setting that my fellow non-Jewish political appointees did not. These sorts of antisemitic questions are anti-American and do not represent the best that the Democratic Party offers. Now and especially during the next presidential campaign, we must demand better,” he added.

Remus and a representative for Harris did not respond to The New York Times’s requests for comment.

During Shapiro’s vetting process, the Pennsylvania governor faced an aggressive campaign from far-left and anti-Israel activists, who branded him “Genocide Josh” and warned Harris against picking him.

In the midst of that campaign, an op-ed he wrote in college was uncovered in which he identified as a former volunteer in the IDF and argued that the Palestinians are too “battle-minded” to pursue peace with Israel.

“While he was in high school, Josh Shapiro was required to do a service project, which he and several classmates completed through a program that took them to a kibbutz in Israel, where he worked on a farm and at a fishery,” Shapiro’s spokesperson Manuel Bonder told The Times of Israel at the time.

“The program also included volunteering on service projects on an Israeli army base. At no time was he engaged in any military activities,” Bonder added in a statement responding to an inquiry regarding the nature of his volunteer work.

Also in his new book, Shapiro recounted that his wife, Lori, voiced opposition to his joining the Harris campaign during a phone call.

“I am in a Canadian Walmart right now. Maybe not the ideal time for this conversation,” Shapiro recalled her telling him. “I don’t think we are ready to do this. It’s not the right time for our family. And it’s not on our terms.”

Eventually, Shapiro pulled out of the running. When he asked to talk to Harris about his decision, her representatives told Shapiro that “the VP would not handle bad news well and that I shouldn’t push.”

Harris later picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and the two went on to lose the general election to Donald Trump.

CNN reported on Monday that Harris’s campaign also asked Walz if he was a foreign agent for China during his vetting process.

The network cited four sources familiar with the matter who ostensibly are tied to Harris, as the former vice president’s inner circle seeks to push back on allegations of antisemitism. CNN said a series of trips Walz took to China sparked the question from Harris’s vetting team.

Shapiro’s spokesperson told The New York Times that he “wrote a very personal book about his faith, his family, and the people of Pennsylvania he has learned from and fought for throughout his life in public service. The 2024 election is one small part of his much broader story.”

Shapiro, 52, will run for a second term as Pennsylvania governor. He is also seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Shapiro has visited Israel often and firmly backed its right to self-defense since Hamas’s invasion and slaughter in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. He has also called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “one of the worst leaders of all time,” saying that the prime minister was steering Israel in the wrong direction.

Last year on Passover, the governor’s mansion was set on fire. Shapiro and members of his family had to be awakened and evacuated, but no one was injured in the fire.

Arsonist Cody Balmer told police he believed Shapiro was encouraging the war in Gaza, and that he “needs to stop having my friends killed,” and “our people have been put through too much by that monster.”

JTA contributed to this report.