A new book by a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser alleges that former Vice President Kamala Harris was quietly preparing to take over former President Joe Biden’s donor network in the days before he abandoned his 2024 re-election bid. On a call the author says Harris held on July 19, 2024, the vice president assured some of the party’s biggest donors that Biden was not going anywhere.
The allegations come from Lindy Li, who left the Democratic Party — an organization she has likened to a cult — after raising roughly $20 million across the Biden-Harris campaign. Harper is scheduled to publish her book, “Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider’s Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse,” on September 22, 2026, and she repeated the accusations in an interview with Fox News Digital. None of Li’s claims have been independently confirmed.
Li has also discussed her break with the party and the book on “Fox News Sunday.” Harris, she says, kept well clear of criticizing Biden while courting the people who would fund whatever came next.
What Li Says About the Call
“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 in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital.
“She would host calls with donors and pretend to support Biden and say there’s no daylight between Biden and herself,” Li said.
Li is not certain of the date, though she puts the call roughly 48 hours before Biden quit the race. “It was either on July 19th or July 20th. Actually, I think it was July 19, 2024; Kamala Harris held a call saying that there was no way that Biden would drop out and that she would stick with him until the end. And these were some of the biggest donors in the party,” Li said.
The pitch, by her telling, did not land. “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,” Li said. She called the approach insulting.
Pressure on Biden to step aside mounted after his June 2024 debate with then-former President Donald Trump, a performance widely judged a disaster. He announced the suspension of his campaign on July 21, 2024, endorsing Harris less than 30 minutes after releasing the letter that explained his withdrawal.
The Hours After Biden Stepped Aside
The handoff was less seamless than it looked from the outside, Li also claims, saying Biden “didn’t want to endorse her right away” and took a while to do it — an account at odds with the public timeline. Harris, in her telling, prioritized face time with the donors she believed could soon bankroll a campaign of her own.
The book also claims Harris polled last among potential 2024 Democratic replacements for Biden, according to a report published September 17, 2026.
In a book excerpt published September 16, 2026, Li writes that the Harris campaign lied about celebrities including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny to attract and exploit crowds. One such claim — “Beyoncé will perform on the final night of the convention!” — was, she writes, “just a lie to pack the stadium for Kamala’s acceptance speech.”
A Fundraiser Who Switched Sides
Li is not a neutral witness. For about a decade she was an influential Democratic donor and surrogate, served on the DNC National Finance Committee and raised money with both the Biden and Harris teams. A former financial analyst, she ran for Congress in 2018 and lost in the Democratic primary before becoming a DNC fundraiser. She says she came under attack for criticizing Harris’ campaign spending and left the party, and that questioning whether Harris could lead Democrats to victory got her ostracized.
Her repositioning on the right followed. Li revealed in January 2025 that she was raising money for President Trump, and she says she is supporting Republicans in the midterms. She has branded Harris’ failed presidential bid a $1 billion disaster; the campaign closed with post-election debts of $20 million to $22 million.
Former allies hit back hard when she first went public in 2025. Jaime Harrison, the former DNC chair, disputed her claim that she had raised her concerns with party leadership. He produced what he said was her actual message to him — a request for photo access with the vice president — and called the contrast “Hilarious.” Author John Pavlovitz said he had worked closely with Li on a large Harris fundraiser. He called her “such a complete fraud who has lost any moral compass she had,” said she “immediately pivoted to Trump” once the election was decided and said watching it had been “heartbreaking and infuriating.”
Ashley Biden, daughter of former President Joe Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden, threatened to sue Li over her claim that Biden’s decline was covered up, according to a report published September 18, 2026. The lawsuit threat came via Instagram and was taken down a day later. Li described it as having “Bordered on parody.”
This is not the first airing of her account. She told journalist Tara Palmeri, in an interview published May 7, 2025, that she began to believe in 2022 that Biden had slowed and needed notecards for simple tasks at events, and that she feels agony over not pressing her concerns harder. That interview left her feeling “deceived,” she later told Newsweek, adding that a book excerpt discussed in it was only a rough draft, one she had asked not be shared.
Of her decision to publish, Li told Fox News in comments reported September 16, 2026: “I don’t think I could have lived with myself had I not told the truth.”
The fuller version she now offers makes the same argument: the people closest to Biden understood his campaign would likely grind to a halt after the debate, and even before it, and they said nothing. That claim, like every allegation in the book about Harris and the donors, rests on Li’s word alone.