Josh Shapiro has spent years polishing his image, positioning himself as a potential presidential candidate. He hasn’t quite figured out that his party will never nominate a Jew for president, so you would think he’d still try to keep up appearances and pretend to be a decent human being before he starts his presidential campaign next year.
Instead, he’s making headlines for something extremely unflattering: a backyard land grab that truly destroys his statesman image and makes him out to be more like a corrupt governor abusing his position to get what he wants.
“Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s neighbors are suing the Democrat, accusing him of stealing a slice of their land to erect an eight-foot-high security fence around his private residence in an ‘outrageous abuse of power,’” reports the New York Post. “The neighbors, Jeremy and Simone Mock, are currently duking it out with the governor in court over a 2,900 square foot parcel of land located between their two homes in Abington, Montgomery County, court papers show.”
It gets worse. Shapiro is essentially claiming squatter’s rights on the land.
The Mocks alleged in a lawsuit filed last month that Shapiro and his wife, Lori, unlawfully seized the stretch of land after initial negotiations to buy it from them went up in flames.
Shapiro claimed in a countersuit that he owns the disputed land due, citing an “adverse possession” loophole that makes it his because he has maintained the sliver of property for decades.
The land-grab tit-for-tat kicked off last year when the Shapiros first sought to erect the huge fence and upgrade security following an arson attack on the governor’s official residence in Harrisburg while they were all sleeping inside on April 13.
“This is a case of squatters’ rights, which is the colloquial term for the legal doctrine known as adverse possession,” attorney Chad Cummings told Realtor.com. “Where a person continuously maintains possession of another’s property openly, visibly, and notoriously for a set period of time, which varies by state, the squatter can file a court action to ask the court to recognize the squatter—the ‘adverse possessor’—as the legal owner through a quiet title action.”
Think it can’t get worse? Well, it does.
Hellbound and Down 