A onetime top Democratic fundraiser says Kamala Harris used private donor calls to build her own support network while publicly insisting she stood behind Joe Biden, a performance the fundraiser now calls a calculated "charade."
Lindy Li, who raised money for both Biden and Harris before leaving the Democratic Party, told Fox News Digital that Harris hosted calls with some of the party's wealthiest backers in the days before Biden's July 21, 2024, withdrawal from the presidential race. On those calls, Li said, Harris declared there was "no daylight" between herself and the president, even as she worked behind the scenes to inherit his donor base.
Li pinpointed one call in particular. She recalled it taking place on or about July 19, 2024, roughly 48 hours before Biden announced he would not seek a second term. Harris told donors on that call that Biden would not drop out and that she would "stick with him until the end," Li said. Some of the party's biggest financial backers were on the line.
The former fundraiser described what she sees as a deliberate two-track strategy. Harris publicly backed Biden while quietly positioning herself to step in if, or when, he stepped aside.
"It was all charade. 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."
Li said the staff directive gave Harris cover. By barring her own team from discussing a possible promotion, Harris could maintain the appearance of loyalty while cultivating the very relationships she would need if Biden left the race.
Once Biden did step aside on July 21, Harris moved fast. Li described the first 24 hours after the announcement as "a very intensive charm offensive."
"She flattered people up the wazoo. It made it abundantly clear that Biden had endorsed her. And 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."
That timeline raises its own questions. The New York Post reported that Biden's endorsement appeared within 30 minutes of his withdrawal letter, yet Li maintains he was reluctant. If both accounts are accurate, the rapid public endorsement may have papered over private hesitation, giving Harris the appearance of a seamless handoff that was anything but.
Li said the reaction among major donors was immediate and angry. She described private group chats among some of the wealthiest figures in Democratic politics where the consensus was blunt.
"A lot of us have group chats. 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."
Li summed up the donors' sentiment in two words: "It was insulting."
The frustration did not end with the donor calls. After Harris secured the nomination and lost the general election, the financial wreckage became public. Li, who also served on the DNC Finance Committee, called the Harris campaign a "$1 billion disaster" and said it was left $18 to $20 million in debt, the Washington Examiner reported.
Li directed particular criticism at campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon, saying O'Malley Dillon "promised all of us that Harris would win" and that donors felt misled into making large contributions based on those assurances. Biden's endorsement, which came so quickly it foreclosed any open primary process, compounded the sense among insiders that the fix was in from the start.
Li has put her account into a book titled *Unburdened*, published by HarperCollins, which chronicles the months leading up to Biden's suspended campaign. She says figures inside the party had "seen the writing on the wall" about Biden's condition well before his widely criticized 2024 debate performance, and that warnings went unheeded.
Since the election, Li has left the Democratic Party entirely. She has compared the party to a cult and begun raising money for Donald Trump. Her willingness to go on the record, with names, dates, and specifics, sets her apart from the anonymous hand-wringing that typically follows a losing campaign.
Fox News Digital sent a request for comment to representatives for Harris. They did not immediately respond.
Several questions remain unanswered. No other named witness to the July 19 donor call has come forward publicly. Harris's team has not addressed Li's specific claim about the "fake rule" imposed on staff. And the precise sequence of Biden's private deliberations before his endorsement, whether it took minutes or hours, and who pushed him, is still murky.
What Li describes is not complicated. A vice president who saw the opening told donors one thing in public and did another in private. She pledged loyalty to a president whose decline was obvious to the people writing the checks, then moved within hours to claim his infrastructure the moment he stepped aside. The donors knew they were being managed. They said so in their group chats. And they kept writing checks anyway, to the tune of a billion dollars and a loss.
Li's allegations remain single-source in important respects. Harris has not responded. But the timeline Li lays out, a loyalty pledge on July 19, a withdrawal on July 21, a consolidated nomination within days, speaks for itself. If Harris was genuinely surprised by Biden's exit, she recovered faster than any figure in modern campaign history. If she was not surprised, then the donor calls were exactly what Li says they were.
When the people who fund a political party say they felt lied to, and the person they funded still won't answer questions, voters are entitled to draw their own conclusions about who that party actually serves.
