Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has claimed in his forthcoming memoir that 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign asked him if he had ever worked as a “double agent for Israel” while vetting him as a potential running mate.
Shapiro, who is Jewish, wrote in “Where We Keep the Light” that he told his interrogator, former Biden White House Counsel Dana Remus, that he found the question offensive and was told, “Well, we have to ask.”
According to The New York Times, which obtained an advance copy of Shapiro’s book, Remus then asked if the governor had ever “communicated with an undercover agent of Israel.”
“If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” wrote Shapiro, who is thought by some observers to be a contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination.
Shapiro’s account of the questions posed by Remus refer to antisemitic tropes that Jewish politicians, and Jews in general, are more loyal to Israel than the US.
While the Keystone State governor declined to directly criticize Remus, who he said was “just doing her job,” Shapiro wrote that the line of questioning “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”
“I wondered,” he admitted in the book, “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.”
Harris herself, Shapiro went on, asked the governor point-blank if he would “be willing to apologize” for statements criticizing antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses following the Hamas terror attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Shapiro declined to do so, writing, according to the Times: “I believe in free speech, and I’ll defend it with all I’ve got. Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful.”
The 52-year-old previously slammed Harris for her description of him in her campaign memoir, “107 Days,” released last year.
In that book, Harris described the Pennsylvania governor as fixated on the perks of the vice presidency, asking how many bedrooms the official residence at the Naval Observatory contained, and musing about whether the Smithsonian would lend Keystone State art for display.
Harris, the first woman of color to win a major party nomination, also suggested that Shapiro would have wanted to be “in the room for every decision” if she picked him.
She ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz en route to becoming the first Democratic nominee in 20 years to lose the popular vote in addition to the Electoral College.
“She wrote that in her book?” Shapiro told the Atlantic when confronted with the excerpts last month. “That’s complete and utter bulls—t. I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies.”
“She’s trying to sell books and cover her ass,” the governor added before taking back the second half of that comment as “not appropriate.”
“Where We Keep the Light” is available Jan. 27.
