A former DNC fundraiser who raised roughly $20 million for the Biden-Harris campaign now says Kamala Harris told major donors Biden would stay in the race just 48 hours before he dropped out, and calls the whole performance "a charade."
Lindy Li, once one of the Democratic Party's most prolific bundlers, told Fox News Digital that Harris hosted a call with some of the party's wealthiest contributors on or around July 19, 2024, two days before Biden released his withdrawal letter, and assured them there was "no way" Biden would step aside. Li said Harris pledged she would "stick with him until the end."
Biden announced the suspension of his re-election campaign on July 21. He endorsed Harris less than 30 minutes later. The speed of that endorsement, combined with what Li describes as a coordinated charm campaign aimed at donors, paints a picture of a transition that was anything but spontaneous.
Li did not hold back about the reaction inside Democratic donor circles once Biden's withdrawal became public. She said many of the party's biggest financial backers communicated through group chats and recognized immediately that Harris's reassurances had been hollow.
Li described the donor response to Fox News Digital:
"And the immediate reaction is what an effing waste of time. What a charade, how fake. Like these are like the wealthiest people in the country saying that. They were very aware they were being lied to, that Biden was clearly not okay and to be told that he was okay when he was clearly incapacitated."
That account, if accurate, suggests Harris was not merely optimistic about Biden's chances but actively misrepresenting the situation to the very people bankrolling the campaign. Li's central accusation is blunt: Harris was "auditioning for Biden's endorsement" while publicly pretending nothing had changed.
Li told Fox News Digital that Harris imposed what she called a "fake rule" on her own staff, directing them not to discuss the possibility of Harris ascending to the nomination. The purpose, in Li's telling, was to maintain the appearance of loyalty to Biden while quietly positioning for the handoff.
"She was auditioning for Biden's endorsement, and the way that she did it was by imposing a fake rule on her staff to not talk about her ascending to the nomination."
Harris's representatives did not immediately respond to Fox News's request for comment.
Once Biden stepped aside, Li said, Harris moved fast. She described the first day after the withdrawal as "a very intensive charm offensive," with Harris personally flattering donors to consolidate financial support before any rival could organize.
"She was flattering people left and right. The first 24 hours were a very intensive charm offensive on her part."
Li added that Harris made clear Biden had endorsed her, though Li also claimed Biden himself had hesitated. "Biden initially, I don't know if people know this, but he didn't want to endorse her right away. It took him a while," Li said. Biden's endorsement came less than half an hour after his withdrawal letter became public, a timeline that raises its own questions about how much of the transition was spontaneous and how much was pre-arranged.
The broader context of Democratic Party maneuvering around Harris's nomination has drawn scrutiny from multiple directions. The Washington Examiner reported that even Nancy Pelosi lamented Biden's failure to step down sooner, which would have allowed for an open primary rather than a coronation. That complaint underscored a recurring frustration among Democrats who felt the process denied voters any real say.
Gavin Newsom's own positioning relative to Harris has also drawn attention. The California governor pledged to stand aside in 2028 if Harris enters the Democratic primary, a gesture that speaks to the party's ongoing internal power dynamics and the degree to which Harris's political future remains a live question among Democratic leaders.
Li's criticisms did not stop at the pre-withdrawal maneuvering. After Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump, Li went public with a blistering assessment of the entire campaign operation. She branded it "a $1 billion disaster", a phrase she used in interviews with multiple outlets.
Just The News reported that Harris's campaign and affiliated committees spent more than $654 million on advertising between July 22 and Election Day, compared to roughly $378 million spent by the Trump campaign, a gap of 57 percent. Despite that spending advantage, Harris lost. The campaign ended between $18 million and $22 million in debt, depending on the estimate.
Li also pointed a finger at campaign leadership for misleading donors about Harris's prospects. She said campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon had promised donors that Harris would win, which encouraged large fundraising checks.
"I was promised, Jen O'Malley Dillon promised all of us that Harris would win. I feel like a lot of us were misled."
Among the spending details that drew scrutiny: Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions received $1 million from the Harris campaign for her appearances at a town hall and the campaign's final rally, according to Just The News. For donors who had written six- and seven-figure checks expecting a competitive operation, that kind of expenditure only deepened the sense that their money had been squandered.
Harris has since settled into an $8 million Malibu estate, a far cry from the campaign trail, though even that property has made headlines for security concerns after her federal protection was revoked.
Li's break with the Democratic Party did not happen overnight, but it was decisive. In a late 2024 appearance on Piers Morgan's show "Uncensored," she compared the party to a cult.
"And leaving the Democratic Party or even questioning the Democratic Party is like leaving a cult. It's terrifying. I don't want to be a part of this craziness anymore. They're accelerating my rightward shift."
She also said on that program that her donors were furious and that she felt a responsibility to demand answers about where their money went. "My donors are p***ed," Li said. "It's my responsibility to ask what the h*** happened with their money. These are legitimate questions, but no, in the cult, you can't ask questions."
Li's personal history with Harris and the broader Democratic establishment has added layers to her public criticisms. Separate reporting has examined Harris's role in encouraging silence around politically sensitive matters involving other prominent California Democrats, a pattern Li's account echoes, if from a different angle.
By January 2025, Li had crossed the aisle entirely. She revealed she was raising money for Trump, a remarkable reversal for someone who had bundled roughly $20 million for the Biden-Harris ticket. Days after Trump's election victory, Li had told Fox News that Biden's last-minute withdrawal and endorsement of Harris amounted to a "big 'F you'" to the Democratic establishment, his attitude, in her paraphrase, being: "If you don't want me, here's somebody you may not like, deal with it."
Li is now putting her account between covers. Her forthcoming book, titled Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider's Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse, promises a fuller version of the story she has been telling in interviews. Security at Harris's post-political life has itself become a story, with a trespasser breaching her Malibu property after federal protection ended.
Fox News Digital reported that Harris's representatives did not immediately respond to its request for comment on Li's allegations. That silence is consistent with a broader pattern: throughout the post-election period, Harris and her inner circle have offered little public accounting for a campaign that burned through more than a billion dollars and still lost.
Li's claims remain, for now, a single insider's account. No independent corroboration of the specific July 19 donor call, its participants, its contents, or Harris's exact words, has surfaced publicly. The donors Li references remain unnamed. And the question of whether Harris genuinely believed Biden would stay in the race, or was knowingly misleading contributors, cannot be resolved on Li's word alone.
But the broader facts are not in dispute. Biden did drop out two days after the call Li describes. Harris did consolidate donor support within hours. The campaign did spend over $650 million on ads and still lost. And the party did hand its nomination to Harris without a single primary vote.
When the people who wrote the checks start calling the whole thing a charade, the party's problem is no longer messaging. It is credibility.
