{"id":239999,"date":"2026-07-10T06:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/239999\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T06:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:49:09","slug":"man-arrested-over-alleged-antisemitic-threats-to-gov-josh-shapiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/239999\/","title":{"rendered":"Man arrested over alleged antisemitic threats to Gov. Josh Shapiro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Richard John Franklin, 65, had reportedly visited the district office to seek assistance with paying outstanding taxes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">While being helped by a staff member, he began using antisemitic slurs directed at Governor Shapiro and threatened to commit arson at the governor\u2019s mansion, police stated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">After making these threats, state troopers from the Political Violence Threat Unit met with Franklin at his home later that day, where he provided inconsistent accounts of the incident at the district office, CBS News reported.<\/p>\n<p>According to the police report, Franklin admitted to using an antisemitic slur and claimed that his statements about burning the governor\u2019s mansion were \u2018sympathetic\u2019 and \u2018positive in nature\u2019 because the Governor and his family had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/american-politics\/article-862944\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">previously survived an arson attack.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Franklin was taken into custody and charged with terrorist threats, ethnic intimidation, harassment, and disorderly conduct.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">He was taken to Pennsylvania&#8217;s Delaware County Prison after he was unable to post $100,000 bail, and scheduled for a preliminary hearing next week, according to CBS News.<\/p>\n<p>Shapiro and his family had previously survived an arson attack last year while celebrating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/tags\/passover\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Passover<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Their residence was set on fire overnight, prompting the family&#8217;s evacuation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">This previous attack was reportedly motivated by Shapiro&#8217;s perceived stance on Palestine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The attacker, Cody Balmer, called 911 shortly after the incident occurred early on a Sunday morning, identifying himself and telling the operators that Shapiro needed to know he &#8220;will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,&#8221; according to the police search warrant.<\/p>\n<p>Reuters and the Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard John Franklin, 65, had reportedly visited the district office to seek assistance with paying outstanding taxes. While&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16062,36,85433,33,28,30,29,445,66],"class_list":["post-239999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-antisemitism","tag-arson","tag-death-threat","tag-josh-shapiro","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-terrorism","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}