A suspect is in custody after a fire described as an attack at the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro while he and his family were inside.
A mechanic who has previously expressed disdain for Democrats on social media is arrested in connection with the overnight fire at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence, sources familiar with the suspected arsonist told ABC News.
Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were in the residence at the time of the fire, which was reported at about 2 a.m. ET. They were evacuated safely and were not injured, according to state police.
Sources said the suspect allegedly used what they described as “a Molotov cocktail” to start the fire.
The suspect was identified as 38-year-old Cody Balmer, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Dauphin County DA Fran Chardo said during the press conference.
Chardo said charges, set to be filed Sunday, will include attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault against an enumerated person.
He made two Molotov cocktails from Heineken bottles he had at home, according to the criminal complaint. He threw them into the mansion after breaking a window with a hammer.
In court documents, authorities said Cody Balmer told them after he was taken into custody that he would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer if he had found him. Balmer had walked an hour from his home to the governor’s residence, documents say.
Investigators said they recovered items at Balmer’s home matching those used in the attack.
Sources familiar with Balmer said his public grievances with the Democratic Party were primarily related to financial issues.
Investigators are also digging into records to determine whether Balmer may have been experiencing financial problems, the sources said.
Shapiro said during the press conference that the attack was “targeted.”
“We do know that this attack was targeted… this type of violence is not okay,” the governor said. “And I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another,” he added.
Just hours before the fire, the Pennsylvania governor had posted a picture of his family’s Passover Seder table on X, writing, “From the Shapiro family’s Seder table to yours, happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach!”
When you normalize political violence by pardoning those who attacked the capitol you should expect t more of this. What’s even worse is a lot of vaguely online right type people want to paint this guy as a Democrat so they can talk about liberal on liberal violence and thus deflect.Report
It’s probably unrelated. This lone wolf stuff has been a problem for decades.
If he’s an outright lunatic then it’s a mental health issue. If he’s higher functioning then it’s more connected to how poisonous our social/political media is.
That doesn’t mean the pardons don’t encourage groups (especially the groups that got pardoned).Report
Calling “far-right fanatics that were feed a steady diet of far-right nonsense that constantly plays of violence and ‘second amendment remedies’ to fix imaginary harms, who _do_ slip over the very thin line into actual violence’ a term like ‘lone wolves’ is pretty much the entirety of the problem.
There is an entire infrastructure, with media, celebrities, organized groups, etc,of bubbling anger at extremely vague things, including ‘white people not being in charge’. They talk, near constantly, about how violence will eventually be the solution. And they are treated as normal and essentially embraced by the Republicans. Sometimes they get a little _too_ antisemitic or neoNa.zi and the right used to have slightly distant itself from one person or another, but that has stopped recently, which had made things get much, much worse.
The ‘lone wolves’ are a logical and deliberate result of that environment. Fascism actually loving having violent actors like this running around threatening people who step out of line or who are not the ‘right sort of people’, it means it doesn’t have to openly do it itself and it can distance itself from it. Until violence against them is so normalized it can do it themselves.
Or just read: https://www.csis.org/analysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terrorism-amid-polarization-and-protest
Which points out another interesting thing. While left-wing domestic terrorism is increasing (Although it is still pretty far from the right-wing), people really should scroll to Figure 7 to realize what left-wing domestic terrorism means there.
The reliance by violent far-right perpetrators on weapons such as guns, explosives, and incendiaries is consistent with their larger share of fatal attacks in 2021. These attacks often targeted people directly, particularly government personnel and private individuals. Meanwhile, violent far-left perpetrators primarily used melee weapons and incendiaries to cause property damage, particularly against government and police buildings and businesses. These data indicate that while both violent far-right and violent far-left actors committed a historically large number of terrorist attacks in 2021, violent far-right actors were more likely to pursue their motives with lethal intent.
It’s weird, when you think about it, how we never call some rando in a BLM crowd that hurled a Molotov at an brick Federal building, causing no real damage, a ‘lone wolf’. That’s the BLM movement itself being violent.
Yet somehow a right-wing guy who threw one at a occupied residence with the obvious intent of murdering the people inside is. There’s nothing behind that, no siree, he just decided to do that entirely by himself!Report
DavidTC: The ‘lone wolves’ are a logical and deliberate result of that environment.
This is the sort of thing we hear just before we find out his politics are wrong.
The way to bet is he’s mentally ill and has no sane politics.
Looking him up… he’s a bipolar schizophrenic who hates Trump (and to be fair, Biden. Apparently all politicians).Report
Lone wolves don’t act just because. And differentiating a lone wolf from a pack based on underlying politics sounds an awful lot like differentiating people based on skin color. And then concluding that those with more melanin are less intelligent or more crime prone or the like.Report
Two things can be true at once. Even crazies need a permission structure.Report
The claim is this was inspired by the far right. That he’s consuming far right media and is a member. Checking his political views seems a good way to judge that.
If you’re going to claim that all violence stems from the far right no matter what the guilty individual thinks then imho you’re just drawing a line between something you don’t like and something else you don’t like.
If you’re claiming something else then I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Phil: Lone wolves don’t act just because.
Jan 6th was clearly caused by Trump and company, but that’s a group with well defined sources, motivations, and we can draw clear lines.
With lone wolves, especially dysfunctional mentally ill lone wolves, it’s a lot harder. The claim is they’re inspired by the ideology but the counter argument is people who want to commit violence are attracted to violent ideologies.
For example the various school shooters are inspired by the previous school shooters.Report
Checking his political views would require actually checking his political views, not pretending ‘Guy didn’t like either of the past two presidents’ means he is some politically-neutral actor. As I pointed out, _I_ don’t like either of the last two presidents either, but if I were to commit an act of political terrorism, it would be pretty accurate to describe me as ‘pretty far to the left’, and that is not disproven because of some post where I criticized Biden! It is possible to dislike both parties from the same direction.
And here’s the thing: We are not going to find out his ‘politics’ are wrong. We might find out that part of them are _weird_ or maybe even incoherent enough we can’t position him at all, I will admit it might be possible he’s not actually on the far right. But there’s always the warning ‘You’ll change your tune if his politics are on the left’ and they _never are_, the left absolutely doesn’t do this, and at some point we need to recognize the reality of that.
We also need to realize that the reason this sort of thing is happening is the general violent stew that the far-right has made, of integrating violence as a proposed logical result of politics, and even the incoherent people likely got violence from there even if their politics are nonsense.
As that article pointed out: People on the left do commit political violence. But you know who the left doesn’t violently attack? Not in modern politics? Politicians. Law enforcement, yes, politicians, no. (This is probably because, at some level, the left actually respects elections and the will of the people. Whereas they do not respect cops.)
I think the closest thing is that guy who was going to assassinate Kavanaugh and, it’s interesting to note that not only was he mostly apolitical and seemed to pick that assassination as a way to ‘do some good’ before committing suicide, he _literally decided not to through with it_, calling 911 to turn himself in after he broke into Kavanaugh’s house.
Those are not two distinct arguments. The ideology not only sets up the anger, it gives them permission to use that anger.
‘School shooting’ is not an ideology. Previous school shootings can be understood as a promise that their violence will get them fame. It doesn’t really have much to do with the ideology behind the actual shooting. (Although sometimes their ideology points them at a school.)Report
It’s the 1970s all over again! Was it a liberal who hates the fact that he’s kind of centrist? Was it a neo-Nazi who hates the fact that he’s kind of Jewish? Was it a radical centrist who hates the fact that the liquor stores are all state-owned? You won’t know until his Facebook is made public!Report
He *looks* like he’s probably neo-Republican… but as you note, the sentence “Balmer said his public grievances with the Democratic Party were primarily related to financial issues” has a little bit of ‘car ran over some pedestrians at a Christmas fair’ kinda feel to it.
Could be anti-elf, could be anti-Christian, could be a cry-for help, could be a principled opposition to the commercialization of a high holy day. Hard to tell where cars stand, really.
He’s certainly not as charismatic as Luigi… so I expect his facebook will confirm neo-Republican.Report
Searching for “Balmer” on twitter seems to indicate that he was a “registered socialist” who, apparently, hated everybody.Report
Dang-it… those financial related issues are nuanced.Report
Why is a ‘registered socialist’ still on Twitter?Report
He’s not only an arsonist, he’s a hypocrite.
SMGDMFH.Report
To be clear, the “Registered socialist” (not an actual thing) post was a clear shitpost, in which he also claimed he had 27 mail in ballots, playing on the rightwing belief that the “left” votes multiple times. I don’t think there’s any evidence he was any sort of socialist.Report
Don’t give anyone any ideas. This crowd would very much favor having socialists register.Report
I guess I can accept that reframing. It’s a dry joke that comes across a lot dryer after allegedly lighting tinder.
He seems to have anarchist sympathies, but who doesn’t?Report
Yeah, there’s definitely a serious 90s libertarian vibe: a lot of sarcasm, hates everyone (but especially women), hates the government, hates taxes, likes weed and guns, wants to be mostly left alone. The only known politically-oriented person I saw him cite approvingly was Thomas Sowell, which fits with this vibe.Report
Somebody dug up that his grandmother’s house was repo’ed and sold in a sheriff’s auction a couple years back, after her death.
If that was his residence until eviction/sale, it could be something as simple as hating the government.Report
So, yes, that sounds plausible, but also…no. It’s not _just_ that.
There are a lot of people who have been greatly injured by the government, or at least think they have. That is not a political position, and it happens to people all over the political spectrum. Sometimes these people become political, and it’s somewhat normal. Other times people become radicalized. And that can happen a lot of different ways.
But there is a very specific category out there created by politics, and that is the far right violence-hole, for lack of a better term. The Proud Boys, the 3%ers, all sorts of internet forums that threat violence as a normal and inevitable outcome. The people who propose ‘second amendment remedies’, who will happy tell you if anything bad happens to you from the government, you should start attempting to ‘overthrow’ them.
This is not the only political group that has done this. The Anarchists, for example, historically were really good at it about a century ago. There were all sorts of far left groups running around in the seventies.
But currently there is exactly one group like that.
And before anyone tries to BSDI, I feel I should point at the current political environment, at who the government is currently harming, and that almost all actual political violence that is happening is _still_ being done by the right. If there ever was a time for the actual political violence, it would be against ‘send people without trial to foreign gulags’, but…nope. And the amount of LGBTQ people throwing bricks at cops for harassing queer people in the bathroom is, sadly, still zero.
That’s because most of this country is _extremely_ reluctant to start political violence, and the rest draw the line at some levels of property damage. But there is one very small group of people who are promote it constantly, who promote shooting and killing government officials, and sometimes people who are generally incoherent or apolitical but angry, justified or not, find those groups and latch on to that bit. It doesn’t so much matter what _their_ politics are.Report
Are you familiar with the fallacy “Begging the Question“?
It’s an important one!Report
Doesn’t sound like either side takes the hit for him: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/04/14/who-cody-balmer-harrisburg-pa-arson-shapiro/83079845007/#Report
The discourse ™ will not be denied: Is he part of the 20% that *would* want to work in a factory or the 80% that would *not* want to work in a factory?Report
Let’s give him to Antifa.
Then we can compare him to WWII vets.Report
The New York Post reports that the police have interviewed the guy and he has allegedly said that he did it because of the Palestinian thing.
Well. Assuming the police are not lying, now we get to start setting up defense gofundmes.Report
And there you go. As fun as it was to think he was a stawman villain we want to oppose and proving what we want to believe, the reality is he’s an incoherent nut.
Just like the last time. And the time before that. And so on.Report
For what it’s worth, I think that the guy is a nutcase who has mental health problems and has, for some reason, decided that a very publicly “globalizing the intifada” is the best public relations play to get a very loud minority of “the left” on his side (and maybe become a bit of a Luigi).
But I also know that, in practice, that looks like “it’s not *REAL* anti-Semitism unless it’s sincere!” and I’m not sure that I’d want to defend that position for more than one or two clarifications.Report
Wait, if he attacked the Dem Governor because the Governor is Jewish then it’s at least somewhat coherent. (EDIT: And that’s the case).
I thought he was attacking the Governor because he himself (the arsonist) was Jewish but also supported Palestine.Report
My suspicion is that he has *MAJOR* mental health issues and hates anybody who is remotely adjacent to government due to, among other things, his eviction and divorce and this and that and the other thing and he would have done the same thing if the governor was a Native American, Haitian Immigrant, or even a boring old white dude.
He then figured that his best play was *NOT* to lean on “I’m a loser” but, instead, to pick up some of that free-floating Luigi energy that seems to attach itself to folks who have acted sufficiently as agents of the unheard.
But that’s just a theory.
Maybe he is just upset about Shapiro’s relationship to Israel/Gaza.Report