A little more than a year after the 2024 presidential election, wild claims about the vetting team of Democratic opponent/former Vice President Kamala Harris have surfaced.
Videos by Suggest
In his recently released memoir, Where We Keep the Light, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro detailed being approached by Harris’ vetting team as a potential running mate.
Speaking about the vetting process, Shapiro wrote that Dana Remus, a former White House counsel under President Biden, had asked him as a vetting team member, “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?”
“Was she kidding?” Shapiro wrote. “I told her how offensive that question was.”
He then wrote that Remus said the team had to ask. “‘We just wanted to check,’ she added,” Shapiro recalled. “‘Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?'”
Shapiro admitted to growing frustrated about the conversation. “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” he wrote. “I calmly answered her questions. Remus was just doing her job. I get it. But the fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about people around the VP.”
The Politican Previously Volunteered on an Israeli Army Base
Shapiro is a well-known Zionist and practicing Jew. According to CNN, the Pennsylvania governor has been critical of protests on college campuses over Hamas’s October 2023 attack and the Israeli government’s responses.
The politician also has ties to Israel. He volunteered on an Israeli army base when he was in high school and working on an Israeli kibbutz. During his college years, Shapiro wrote in an op-ed, Palestinians “do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States.”
However, Shapiro’s team has since downplayed his past experiences in Israel. They also said his college essay is not a reflection of his current views on the Palestinians.
Shapiro also wrote that Harris approached him about his criticism of the protests at the University of Pennsylvania. When she asked him if he would apologize for his remarks, he flatly replied, “No.”
“She heard me and expressed how bad she felt that I had been getting hammered with the antisemitic attacks that she had witnessed throughout the process,” he wrote.