OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
9:40 AM – Thursday, August 28, 2025
Former Vice President Kamala Harris made a “handshake deal” with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after her 2024 presidential election defeat, according to a report from The New York Times.
The agreement meant that the DNC quietly paid off $20.5 million in debts owed by the Harris-Walz team in exchange for Harris’s promise to raise money for the Democratic Party, the New York Times reported on Monday, corroborated by four anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
“The private agreement was this: The party would pick up the tab for any outstanding 2024 bills, allowing Ms. Harris to claim she did not end the race in debt. In turn, Ms. Harris would raise the money to cover all of those leftover costs, leaving the party whole financially as it sought to navigate the second Trump era,” said The New York Times.
Advertisement
According to the report, the $20.5 million paid by the DNC is actually a small portion of the $1.5 billion the Harris-Walz campaign managed to spend in the Democratic nominee’s 15-week campaign. Harris’s expenses included chartered planes, music licensing, polling, and several fees to an agency that aided in advertising through “online influencer work.”
Harris’s team sent nearly 100 fundraising emails this year alone, urging Democrat donors to contribute to the DNC. The email campaign did not disclose that their contributions would be used to pay off expenses from Harris’s brief presidential campaign, according to the New York Times.
Roger Lau, the executive director of the DNC, referred to the former Vice President at the time as a “grass-roots fund-raiser,” thanking her for her support for the committee.
“The D.N.C. has raised more grass-roots dollars in 2025 than in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2023, not including sends from the vice president,” he said in a statement.
The DNC entered into 2025 with $22.1 million, but reported $13.9 million, the report stated.
The current party chairman, Ken Martin, was elected in February, before the deal was struck, but it has remained in place under his leadership. In a June news release, he celebrated his party’s fund-raising efforts.
“The D.N.C. has just set a new record for most money raised in the first four months under a new chair — ever,” he said.
However, about 20 cents of each dollar spent by the DNC so far this year went toward paying off Harris’s leftover debts, not funding new initiatives, like the former Vice President suggested:
“They will put your donation to work immediately toward winning the next set of elections,” Harris promised her supporters in a February email.
Though the committee’s reporting of the distribution of funds was not transparent, Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center, claims that the party followed all reporting rules.
“It’s not completely forthright but it’s also far from the most exploitative of campaign practices we see happening,” he said.
Harris’s staff denied there would be campaign debts immediately following her election loss.
The Harris campaign’s post-election filings said that “there were no outstanding debts or bills overdue” as of the time of the election.
The next report, indeed, did not show any debts from the expensive presidential campaign, though the party has since started reporting paying $20.5 million in Harris’s expenses as “party coordinated expenditures.”
“The spending includes $3.5 million to the company that works with influencers, the Village Marketing Agency; $2.1 million to a media production company, Assembly House LLC; nearly $440,000 to a chartered plane company; and $100,000 to an entertainment and production firm, SpringHill Company, co-founded by LeBron James,” Goldmacher reported.
The DNC is now facing a financial disadvantage compared to the Republican National Committee (RNC), which reportedly entered August with $84.3 million — six times the amount the Democrats were able to collect. The DNC reportedly had less money this summer than at any point in the past five years.
The last expense the committee paid off for the failed Democrat nominee was in July, according to disclosures recently made public. They funneled $498,287.30 to Howard University, where Harris made her concession speech.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news alerts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
What do YOU think? Click here to jump to the comments!Sponsored Content Below