Suspected arsonist says he planned to kill Pennsylvania governor

The suspect in a weekend arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence said he “harbored hatred” against the Democrat and would have beaten him with a hammer if he had encountered the governor inside the mansion.

After turning himself in to the state police, the 38-year-old suspect, Cody Balmer, said that he used homemade Molotov cocktails to set the mansion on fire on Sunday.

The attack took place after the governor and his family were asleep at the residence in the state capital of Harrisburg, according to a summary of a police interview with him filed in court.

The attack was the latest episode of political violence directed at an elected official, and bore similarities with the October 2022 home invasion at the San Francisco residence of Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In that incident, a man beat her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.

Balmer has been charged with attempted murder, arson, burglary and terrorism intended to coerce “the conduct of a government,” among other felonies.

Shapiro, who is Jewish, said his family had held a seder on Saturday to celebrate the first night of Passover, a major Jewish holiday, with his family and guests in the dining room of the mansion.

A state trooper banged on a door around 2 a.m. on Sunday morning to wake Shapiro and rush him and his family and pets to safety.

Balmer told troopers he had filled beer bottles with gasoline from a lawnmower before walking about an hour to reach the governor’s mansion, according to the police summary.

Once he arrived, he scaled a fence, smashed the window of the mansion’s piano room and threw a Molotov cocktail inside, police said, citing video recorded by security cameras. He then smashed his way inside and ignited the dining room before fleeing, according to the police account.

Photographs taken after the fires were extinguished, distributed by the state government, showed a grand room entirely blackened and littered with debris, a charred chandelier, a grand piano blistered by the flames and stuffing spilling out of sooty upholstered furniture.

Balmer, who describes himself as a certified master mechanic on his Facebook page, remained in custody today. It was not clear whether he had a lawyer.

He was due to make a first appearance in the court at the Dauphin County Prison today, but that was delayed after state police said they had taken him to a hospital for an unspecified medical event not connected to his arrest or Sunday’s attack.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE

In a March 2021 Facebook post, Balmer expressed his displeasure with high gasoline prices with a picture of himself and the caption “Biden owes me 2 Grand.”

In June 2022, he posted a picture of an embroidery that appeared to depict a Molotov cocktail – a green bottle with flames shooting from it and the words: “Be the light you want to see in the world.”

In January 2023, Balmer was charged with three counts of assault for allegedly striking his stepsons, 10 and 13, and his wife, who he also bit during an altercation, according to a Penbrook Borough Police Department report. He pleaded not guilty in that case. A police officer who responded to the incident wrote that Balmer told him he had “taken a bottle full of pills in an attempt to kill himself.”

Pennsylvania was also the scene of last year’s attempt to assassinate Donald Trump during his successful campaign for the presidency. In July, a man used a rifle to shoot at the then-Republican candidate, grazing his ear, during a rally in Butler, about 200 miles (322 km) west of Harrisburg.

Shapiro, seen as a potential candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, said at a press conference on Sunday that FBI Director Kash Patel had spoken to him and promised “all the resources of the federal government” in investigating the attack.

The residence was set on fire hours after Shapiro posted a picture of his family’s seder table, which he described as a celebration of going “from slavery into freedom.”

“I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempts to put on me by attacking us as they did here last night,” he said on Sunday.

When asked whether the attack could have been motivated by antisemitism, Shapiro said he would defer to the findings from federal authorities and Pennsylvania law enforcement.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday told CNN today that authorities were still investigating whether there was an antisemitic motive.

“If that is the case, it’s reprehensible,” Sunday said. “It’s very scary when violence, especially of a political nature, occurs. The outcome, the impact, is far greater than that one person who was a target. It chills public discourse, it puts people in a position where they’re fearful.”

Additional reporting by Ned Parker, John Shiffman and Andrew Hay.