A Pennsylvania man has been charged after allegedly making antisemitic threats against Governor Josh Shapiro, including threatening to set fire to the governor’s official residence, little more than a year after it was targeted in an arson attack, reports Jerusalem News Syndicate.
Richard John Franklin, 65, of Delaware County near Philadelphia, was arrested on Wednesday following an investigation by Pennsylvania State Police.
According to police, Franklin visited the district office of State Representative Leanne Krueger on 7 July to discuss an issue relating to unpaid taxes. During a conversation with a member of staff, he allegedly used an antisemitic slur when referring to Governor Shapiro, who is Jewish, and threatened to burn down the governor’s residence.
The incident was reported to Pennsylvania State Police, whose Political Violence Threat Unit subsequently launched an investigation.
When officers visited Franklin’s home, they said he gave several conflicting accounts of what had happened. Police stated that he admitted using the antisemitic slur but claimed that his comments about the governor’s mansion were intended sympathetically because Shapiro and his family had survived the previous attack.
Franklin was taken into custody without incident.
He has been charged with making terroristic threats, ethnic intimidation, political threats, harassment and disorderly conduct.
Sergeant Logan Brouse, Communications Director for Pennsylvania State Police, said the force treats threats against elected officials with the utmost seriousness.
He said the department had established a dedicated Political Violence Threat Unit in response to a growing number of ideologically motivated threats against public officials and would continue working to protect those serving in public office.
The case comes just over a year after an arson attack on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg on 13 April 2025. Governor Shapiro and his family were inside the building after celebrating Passover when an attacker deliberately set fire to the residence, forcing them to evacuate safely.
The attacker, Cody Ballmer, later said he had been motivated by Shapiro’s position on the Israel–Hamas conflict. He pleaded guilty and, in October 2025, was sentenced to between 25 and 50 years in prison.
Marcia Bronstein, Regional Director of the American Jewish Committee, welcomed the latest arrest and praised the swift response of state police.
She said that, at a time when antisemitism has reached unprecedented levels in the United States, threats against Jewish public figures cannot be dismissed as harmless. Given the previous attack on Governor Shapiro’s home, she said the Jewish community cannot afford to assume such threats are merely rhetorical.
The alleged threat forms part of a wider pattern of antisemitic violence in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League included the 2025 arson attack on Governor Shapiro’s residence among the year’s most serious antisemitic incidents, alongside the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, D.C., and the firebomb attack on a demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, supporting Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Photo Credit: Commonwealth Media Services/Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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