According to multiple reports, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro claimed in his upcoming memoir that the vetting team for Kamala Harris asked him if he was ever an “agent of the Israeli government.” In a preview of the book, “Where We Keep the Light,” Shapiro reportedly said he thought the question was offensive. Former Biden aide Dana Remus allegedly asked the question, reports said. According to Fox News, the question in the vetting process stated: “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?” Josh Shapiro writes in his new book that Kamala Harris's vetting team asked him if he had ever been a double agent for Israel. https://t.co/Pvg5HpDh7v — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 19, 2026 Fox News explained further: “Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was,” Shapiro wrote. “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 some of the people around the VP,” he added. Shapiro described further probing about his views on political topics — such as whether he’d be willing to “apologize for some of his comments about protesters at the University of Pennsylvania who had built encampments to decry Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and, in some cases, intimidated Jewish students.” “It nagged at me that their questions weren’t really about substance,” Shapiro wrote. “Rather, they were questioning my ideology, my approach, my world view.” The Pennsylvania governor added that he eventually decided against becoming Harris’ running mate after Remus suggested the position “might be a financial burden for him and his wife.” “Are you trying to convince me not to do this?” Shapiro wrote. “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,” Shapiro wrote, according to ABC News. In his new book, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro discusses the strange questions he received during vice-presidential vetting—and settles some scores, Toluse Olorunnipa reports: https://t.co/v0DxT3JtyH — The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 19, 2026 ABC News has more: Asked for comment on the matter, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said in a statement to ABC News that “the 2024 election is one small part of his much broader story — and the Governor looks forward to sharing much more about this book and the stories within it very soon.” ABC News has reached out to spokespeople for Harris and to Remus about the questions she allegedly asked Shapiro. While Shapiro was a reported contender for Harris’ running-mate spot, amid major debates within the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war and the U.S.-Israel relationship, given Israel’s conduct in Gaza, he faced scrutiny from progressives over his pro-Israel views, as well as some previous time spent volunteering in Israel, including on an Israeli army base. He also faced questions over his college writing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where he expressed doubts that Palestinians could come to a peace agreement with Israel. Shapiro and his spokespeople said at the time that his time volunteering did not include military activity, and that his views on the conflict had evolved to support a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The vetting process for running mates is known to be intensive and often tries to get ahead of questions that may be asked publicly of candidates. Harris, in her memoir “107 Days,” wrote that during the vetting process for running mates, she spoke with Shapiro “about how to handle the attacks he’d confronted on Gaza and what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build,” and that they discussed the opinion piece Shapiro wrote in college. “He said he felt he’d been able to deal with critics by stating clearly that his youthful opinion had been misguided and that he was fully committed to a two-state solution. He had also publicly called Netanyahu ‘one of the worst leaders of all time,'” Harris wrote. Shapiro’s memoir is scheduled to be released on January 27th.