A former Democratic National Committee fundraiser who once ran one of the party's most formidable money operations says she is preparing to name, in print, the Democratic officials who privately knew about President Joe Biden's cognitive decline but publicly pretended otherwise.
Lindy Li, who has since switched her party affiliation, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive phone interview that her forthcoming book, Unburdened, will lay out exactly who knew what, and when, about Biden's fitness for office ahead of the 2024 election.
Li told Fox News Digital:
"Whatever was out there, it wasn't the truth. They wanted him to go, and also in my book, I will be telling people exactly who was aware of Biden's cognitive decline but pretended otherwise."
The book, set for publication later this year by HarperCollins, promises to include previously unseen internal polling data and private communications from senior Democratic figures, material that, if verified, would document one of the most consequential deceptions in modern presidential politics.
Li singled out Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as one figure whose private sentiments diverged sharply from his public posture. She said she received a text message from Schiff, then a Democratic candidate for Senate and a top-ranking House Democrat, that made clear he wanted Biden out of the race.
"I remember getting a text from Schiff. I have it in my book. Basically, Adam Schiff was, I can't remember what he said on TV, but I'm telling you right now that behind the scenes he very much wanted [Biden] to go."
A spokesperson for Schiff responded by noting that the senator's concerns about Biden's candidacy were eventually made public. "The Senator's concerns and call on President Biden to not run was very public, so none of this is news," the spokesperson said. Schiff publicly called for Biden to step aside in July.
But the timeline matters. Li's claim is not simply that Schiff had doubts. Her claim is that Schiff and other party figures harbored those doubts privately while the public line held firm, and that the private break came well before any public acknowledgment. The text, she says, is in the book.
Li described a party frozen by a combination of loyalty, fear, and raw political calculation. Biden's decades-long relationships, particularly with figures like Rep. James Clyburn, whom Li called a "chief Biden ally who had helped steer the party for decades", made a direct challenge politically suicidal.
"They didn't want to get [ostracized by the party.] It's like the axiom: you come at the king; you better not miss. Everyone would have missed."
Li also said that multiple Democratic candidates quietly polled themselves against Biden and concluded they could not beat him in a primary, even as they privately questioned his capacity. The motive, she said, was not principle but self-preservation.
"There are many candidates who [polled themselves against Biden] and then realized that they couldn't beat him in a primary. It wasn't a matter so much of anti-Trumpism. It was self-interest."
That framing paints a picture of a party that understood the problem, measured the odds, and chose silence. Not because the evidence was unclear, but because the political math was unfavorable. The public was left watching a president who, during a 2024 debate, stumbled over his words, lost his train of thought, and spoke in a voice that was at times difficult to understand, while insiders already knew what they were seeing.
The broader pattern of a party struggling to find its footing has only deepened since the 2024 election.
Li's disclosures extend beyond Biden's decline. She claims to possess internal polling data, which she says will appear in Unburdened, showing that Vice President Kamala Harris was the weakest potential nominee the party could have chosen.
"I've seen the [polling data,] and I also include that in my book, polling no one has seen before."
Li said the data stacked Harris against Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them, she claimed, outperformed Harris. Yet Harris was the one who ultimately inherited Biden's candidacy after he dropped out.
"[She was the weakest candidate] in the field."
If that polling exists as described, it raises a pointed question: Did Democratic leadership knowingly elevate their least competitive option because the alternative, an open process that might have embarrassed Biden or fractured the party, was politically unthinkable? Li's account suggests the answer is yes.
Li's criticism of the Harris operation has been consistent and detailed. As the New York Post reported, Li called the Harris campaign a "$1 billion disaster" after the election, claiming it left the campaign $20 million in debt. She accused campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon of promising donors that Harris would win, leading them to write "massive checks" based on misleading assurances.
The scale of that financial failure, Trump swept all seven battleground states, only sharpened the recriminations inside the party.
Li's credibility rests on her proximity. Fox News Digital described her as having run a "formidable fundraising operation" for the Democratic Party and as someone "connected with a wide swath of its figures." She served as a DNC national finance committee member and a Biden-Harris campaign surrogate.
That access is what makes her account difficult for the party to dismiss outright. She was not an outside critic. She was in the room, or at least on the group text.
Even so, Li acknowledged Biden's personal appeal. "He had decades of loyalty, his bond with people like James Clyburn," she said. "There's something about Joe Biden. He was incredibly kind." That warmth, in Li's telling, was part of what made the coverup possible. Loyalty to a man they genuinely liked overrode the obligation to level with voters about his fitness.
Senior Democrats have been openly calling for new leadership as the party struggles to rebuild, but few have gone as far as Li in pointing fingers at specific individuals.
Li's book is landing in a political environment where the questions she raises already have an official investigative track. As Breitbart reported, Li has publicly named specific officials she claims acted as "puppet masters" running White House operations in Biden's place, including Bruce Reed, Steve Richetti, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, and Neera Tanden. She also named Anthony Bernal, Jill Biden's chief of staff, who reportedly dodged a congressional subpoena and refused to appear for a voluntary transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee.
Li did not hold back about the former first lady's role. "Jill Biden very much knew what she was doing. What she did was absolutely elder abuse. There is no question in my mind," she said, as quoted by Breitbart.
The effort to suppress Biden's ghostwriter recordings has only added to the impression of a White House determined to control the narrative around the former president's mental state.
Li has paid a cost for speaking out. As Newsmax reported, she has described being ostracized and abused by fellow Democrats for daring to tell the truth, comparing the party's internal culture to a cult. "I feel like I'm liberated, and I can finally tell the truth that the Democrats completely failed on the border," she told Newsmax.
That language, liberation, truth-telling, cult, is not the vocabulary of a disgruntled staffer angling for cable news hits. It is the vocabulary of someone who believes the institution she served deliberately misled the public and punished anyone who broke ranks.
Whether Unburdened delivers the documentary evidence Li promises remains to be seen. The texts, the polling data, the names, all of it is still forthcoming. But the claims themselves are specific enough to be verified or disproven, which separates them from the usual post-campaign score-settling.
The party's internal struggles have shown up in other ways, too. Democratic leaders have stumbled publicly when confronted with the Biden record, suggesting the reckoning Li describes is far from over.
Several questions remain open. Li has not revealed the exact contents of the Schiff text. She has not disclosed specific polling numbers. She has not named every figure she accuses of participating in the coverup, only promised that the book will. The identity of who conducted the internal polling, and when it was fielded, is also unaddressed.
Schiff's office has already begun framing his eventual public break with Biden as proof that no coverup occurred. That defense will hold only if the timeline supports it, if Schiff's private doubts and his public statement arrived at roughly the same moment. Li's account suggests otherwise.
For voters and donors who wrote checks, knocked on doors, and cast ballots based on assurances that Biden was sharp and Harris was strong, the question is simpler: Were they lied to? Li says yes, and she says she has the receipts.
When a party asks the public to trust its judgment on everything from the economy to national security, the least it owes those voters is honesty about whether its own candidate can finish a sentence.