Following U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, many social media users began investigating and criticizing the campaign strategies of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to help explain the result.
One topic of research was the Harris campaign's finances — despite Harris having only a short time to campaign after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July and she replaced him on the Democratic ticket, her campaign raised more than $1 billion.
This claim spread rapidly on social media, and it was reported by conservative news media outlets including Fox News and the New York Post. Other outlets that covered the topic used such conservative media outlets as sources. Lindy Li, a Democratic National Committee official, said on Fox's morning show "Fox & Friends Weekend" that the campaign was a "disaster" and alleged it had ended in debt.
All candidates for federal office are required to report all money they earn and spend to the Federal Election Commission. Those donations are publicly available through the FEC's campaign finance database.
However, that database's most recent update was on Oct. 16, 2024, as of this writing. As such, Snopes can't give this claim a definitive rating until data for the end of October and beginning of November comes in.
As of Oct. 16, the Harris campaign had raised more than $997 million directly, including money raised by the Biden campaign before he dropped out. It had spent $880 million, meaning that through Oct. 16 the campaign had surplus of $118 million and was not in debt.