CNN obtained the Democratic Party’s long-private autopsy of the 2024 election on Thursday.
CNN Senior Reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere told anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown how he had access to the report, saying the report was “not ready” but that over time, he had discovered more information and worked with DNC chair Ken Martin to release it. CNN opted to publish the report in full.
“The plan was not to release this report. The report was released to me after I had obtained a lot of the detail and contents in there,” Dovere said.
The public version published on CNN was annotated by DNC lawyers, “undercutting a lot of what was in the report,” he explained. “We are publishing the full report so people can see it and read for themselves.”
Here are five things to know about the “autopsy” report.
1. The release was delayed from its original release date and prompted a number of conspiracy theories.
The report was originally set to be released in spring 2025.
“Then, DNC chair Ken Martin promised members at their summer meeting last August in his home state of Minnesota, ‘Three weeks,’” Dovere said. “Then October. Then after the November elections. Then, with Martin offering no explanation other than he suddenly didn’t want to look backward, he announced he wouldn’t be releasing it at all.”
Conspiracy theories were mounting in the wake of the report’s delayed release.
“Martin was trying to protect Kamala Harris as she considers another presidential run, Obama campaign alumni were protecting each other, high-priced consultants were trying to keep millions in fees from being revealed, or the party was trying to hide how voters reacted to the Gaza crisis,” Dovere said.
“Or one of the most widespread: Maybe the autopsy didn’t even exist at all,” Dovere added.
2. The Biden White House and campaign neglected Kamala Harris and her campaign.
“The autopsy accuses the Biden administration of not doing more to boost Harris long before the president’s June 2024 debate performance forced him to withdraw, particularly on immigration given the Trump campaign tying the issue to her as the administration’s so-called ‘border czar,’” Dovere said.
3. The Harris campaign was in the dark on key DNC decisions — and may have taken too much for granted.
“Martin entrusted a top priority to a friend, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, who volunteered to work on it part-time and waited several months to contact key officials with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaigns,” Dovere reported. “Many top decision-makers in the campaigns were ultimately never interviewed, and Harris herself has expressed frustration privately that questions about the document have gone on.”
4. The report revealed both campaigns — Biden and Harris — failed to define Trump.
Republicans appeared better at messaging to voters and learning from past elections. This was identified as a pain point during the aftermath of the 2024 election.
5. Not all questions surrounding the election and what happened are included in the current report.
“It gets into things about spending decisions and organizing that was done by the DNC, ways to possibly improve it,” Dovere said. “But there are a lot of things in that version that are incomplete and also, it does not touch a couple of topics a lot of people are very interested in and thought were the reasons for this report not being out. There’s nothing about Joe Biden and what happened in the debate, there’s nothing about Kamala Harris getting the nomination without any kind of primary process and also there’s nothing about the way that voters were responding to Gaza and how the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris policies and comments about it were hitting their minds.”
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