Days after a fire attack caused his official residence, the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, sat with the co-presenter of Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos, for an exclusive interview and a tour of the charred rooms.
“This is unfortunately a real part of our society today. And it must be universally convicted, George,” Shapiro said about the emergence of threats and political motivation attacks that the National Security Department has noticed in recent years.
See more about the exclusive interview of George Stephanopoulos with Governor Josh Shapiro in “Good Morning America” at 7 am on Friday at ABC.
“I don’t care if it comes from the left, from the right. I don’t care if you come from someone you voted or someone you didn’t vote for, someone in your team or someone in the other team,” Shapiro continued.
The governor spoke with Stephanopoulos of one of the rooms damaged by fire in the residence of the governor in Harrisburg on Thursday. For the first time together, the governor and the first lady Lori Shapiro also toured the damage, along with Stephanopoulos.
The governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, speaks with George Stephanopoulos during an interview with ABC News in a room damaged by fires in the Governor’s residence in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 2025.
ABC News
The attack occurred early Sunday, hours after the Shapiro family received more than two dozen people during the first Easter night. The assailant rose to a fence in the governor’s mansion, broke windows and threw Molotov cocktails made of bottles of beer and gasoline, police said.
Shapiro and his family were in the residence at the time of the fire, but were evacuated safely and not injured, according to the State Police.
Harrisburg firefighters Brian Enterline described him as “surreal” to see fire shots from the governor’s residence. Fortunately, the main dining room door was closed at the time of the fire, preventing the fire from extending to the houses. If the door had not been closed, Enterline said Shapiro and his family would certainly have been at risk.
A vision of the damage within the residence of the governor on the day when the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and the Pensylvania state police provide an update on the act of caused fire that took place in the residence, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 2025.
Commonwealth Media Services through Reuters
The suspect in the attack, Cody Balmer, 38, delivered and supposedly told the Police that he would have attacked Shapiro with a hammer if he occurred to the governor within the residence, according to judicial documents.
The alleged incendiary supposedly decided to bombard the official residence of the Democratic governor due to “what they want to do to the Palestinian people” and “based on injustices perceived to the people of Palestine,” according to police orders.
Balmer faces eight criminal charges, including murder attempts, terrorism and burning fire. Until now, prosecutors have not invoked a law of hate crimes, which in Pennsylvania is known as ethnic intimidation.
Balmer, a mechanic who had previously expressed disdain for the Democrats on social networks, was denied the bond in his reading on Monday.
During the hearing, his lawyer said that Balmer is homeless and asked for a “reasonable monetary bond,” but the judge denied it, saying that although he appreciated that Balmer delivered, there were no conditions that could prevent it from being a danger to the community.
