The Democratic National Committee was thrown into fresh turmoil Thursday after it was forced to release an autopsy report commissioned by Chairman Ken Martin on its failed 2024 presidential campaign.
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Rather than quelling speculation about the findings or anger over Martin’s initial claims of confidentiality, the announcement compounded the public relations and management nightmare.
After months of refusing to release the autopsy, the DNC said it had learned important lessons from it, but on Thursday, Martin told a different story. In fact, he said the report was not complete and that he did not support it. The documents released were filled with DNC notes refuting various claims.
Nervous donors are now reconsidering whether they can trust the DNC with their money, according to two sources familiar with internal discussions. Martin spoke on the phone for part of the day to discuss decision-making.
Progressive groups are perplexed that the report released Thursday doesn’t even mention Gaza, even though DNC officials interviewed pro-Palestinian groups.
And some of Martin’s main critics are calling for him to resign.
“This is a total show,” veteran Democratic strategist Steve Scheer said of the turn of events. “I have no confidence in the DNC’s abilities at all.”
Scheer said the question now is whether DNC members will do something about it. There is no mechanism for party members to remove the DNC chair. However, they can participate in a vote of no confidence.
In a conference call with staff Thursday, Martin indirectly addressed the pressure to resign.
“This was a big mistake,” he said on the staff-only call, according to a person familiar with the call. “I own it. Now it’s time to move forward with the DNC. I hope you all move forward with me.”
But Martin simply ushered in another round of vitriol by stating his reasons for keeping it a secret. He asked Paul Rivera, a longtime friend he had known for more than 20 years, to prepare the report. Rivera, who could not be reached for comment, was not paid for his work.
Martin said the DNC has not received any sources from Rivera’s review. A person with knowledge of what happened said the DNC requested but did not receive a list of those interviewed, and the committee also did not receive interview transcripts or notes, despite repeated requests.
Before release
But as the public story about Martin’s autopsy changed, behind-the-scenes communications with Rivera belied some of those accounts.
Two sources said Rivera had recently attended senior-level meetings of the committee and had spoken with Martin inside the DNC building in the months since Martin decided to keep the autopsy secret in December.
The DNC did not immediately comment on Rivera’s continued involvement or say when it severed ties with Rivera. Martin said in a call with DNC members Thursday that Rivera is no longer “affiliated with or advising the DNC in any capacity.”
Last fall, at a DNC national finance committee meeting in Middleburg, Virginia, Mr. Martin introduced Mr. Rivera and heaped praise on her. Mr. Rivera presented slides about the report’s findings. People familiar with the incident said there is no indication the report will not eventually be made public.
Mr. Martin did not see key parts of the report until just before Christmas, according to people familiar with the situation.
The change in stance on the autopsy has only led to greater skepticism from those seeking answers about how the Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris’ stance on Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip contributed to their election loss.
“The party is in a leadership crisis. I think the base is way ahead of the party leadership,” said Noam Solomon, co-founder of Roots Action, which pushed for the report’s publication. “Part of the challenge is that it’s easier to change one leader than it is to change the culture of a party.”
Solomon said the situation is “a repeat of the mess we got in the 2024 Biden campaign. People who knew well in private didn’t say out loud what they knew. They deferred to the people at the top. Since then, in this autopsy process, people have deferred to Ken Martin and allowed him to cooperate with us.”
The Institute for Middle East Understanding said the author of the autopsy report had previously informed its members about research into Gaza’s role in the 2024 elections, and called for more transparency.
“Ken Martin should release what the autopsy’s authors told us clearly and unambiguously: Democratic National Committee officials have reviewed their own data and found that Biden’s support for Israel will be a net negative for the Democratic Party in 2024,” Executive Director Margaret DeReus said in a statement.
Not everyone was angry with Martin, and his allies argue that this is not an issue that average Americans care about, even though Beltway loyalists and the media are consumed by it.
Former DNC Chair Jamie Harrison on Thursday lamented the energy and confusion the report has stirred up within the party and criticized those who didn’t channel that energy into protesting the Supreme Court’s recent ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act.
“You can now go to Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina and ask, ‘What’s in your top 10 priority list?’ And I can tell you it’s not in the DNC report,” Harrison said in an interview Thursday.
One donor who spoke with Martin on Thursday said they admired his work and trusted his leadership.
“What’s really important from my perspective is that, yes, we lost by a narrow margin in 2024, but the less obvious aspect is that we’re outperforming,” said Ursula Telasi, a donor from Kansas City, Missouri. “We’ve had some surprising wins in some unexpected districts. So we’re adjusting, he’s adjusting, he’s helping the states. We have to win the legislative elections in each state, but he’s doing the right thing and most people agree with that.”
Vinod Thomas, a Democratic National Committee member from North Carolina, pointed to several findings from the autopsy.
“The irony of the report is that it confirms what Ken has been saying we need to do: They spent too much money on a last-minute media blitz instead of investing in year-round organizing and voter contact,” Thomas said.
constant pressure
The episode is the latest flashpoint for the Democratic National Committee, which has been under constant pressure since Martin took the helm nearly 16 months ago.
Democrats surged nationally in key 2025 elections and outperformed in key special elections amid President Donald Trump’s approval ratings and voter dissatisfaction with the economy.
But Martin’s tenure has been plagued by a spate of bad headlines, including an internal spat with Gen Z activist David Hogg and repeated questions about the Republican National Committee’s huge financial advantage over Democrats ($124 million to $14 million in the bank as of late last month), according to the latest campaign finance filings. Meanwhile, the DNC’s debt is greater than its cash reserves.
The controversy surrounding the autopsy report has been a persistent problem for Martin.
Just hours after being elected DNC leader in February 2025, Martin talked about how important it was to conduct a full-scale audit of what went wrong in 2024, vowed to make the report available to the public, and scolded previous party leaders for failing to do so after the president’s 2016 defeat.
“Years ago, right after the 2016 election, there was a post-election review, right? And it was never made public. The DNC spent a lot of time and money on it, and it wasn’t even made public to DNC members. So what happened with that? Was there any utility in doing it?” he said at the time.
“Of course it’s going to be released, right? It’s going to be released to our members, and we all have to learn from it,” Martin continued. “We need to learn some lessons before we can put it into practice.”
Then, in December, a turning point came.
Martin said in a statement at the time that while the party “has completed a comprehensive review of what happened in 2024 and is already implementing its learnings,” the DNC would not release the report to avoid distracting Democrats from the future.
At the time, DNC officials told NBC News the review included hundreds of interviews, specific lessons learned and details about how the party needs to be more responsive to voters’ concerns. Neither Mr. Martin nor his officials raised public concerns about the quality of the report at hand.
Martin gave no indication that he didn’t trust the report in an interview late last month on Pod Save America, a liberal podcast hosted by a veteran of the Obama campaign.
Martin changed his tune Thursday on Substack, writing, “When I received the report late last year, it was not ready for prime time.”
“I am not proud of this product. This product does not meet my standards and will not meet yours. I do not support the content of this report or anything that leaked from it. I could not in good faith put the DNC stamp of approval on this product,” he wrote. “But transparency is paramount, so today I am publishing the report exactly as I received it, unedited or summarized, with annotations about the claims I could not verify.”
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Devin Remiker told NBC News that while he accepted Martin’s criticism of the “incomplete and error-filled” report, the entire situation was “disappointing on several fronts.” He said Democrats missed an opportunity to do the complete overhaul in 2024 that many had hoped for. And it’s hard to know what to expect from the report for Democrats who hope their efforts will lead to meaningful improvements in future campaigns.
“Part of the reason the Democratic brand is completely in the toilet right now is that even Democrats don’t fully believe in the Democratic Party,” Remiker said, adding that the autopsy episode doesn’t help.
Asked multiple times whether he was confident Martin would remain chairman to repair trust, Remiker said neither, but called for the party to remain united in a critical election year.
“I don’t spend my days thinking about whether Ken Martin should stay or should he resign,” Remiker said. “I’m glad he’s finally released the autopsy results, and I hope this is a point of reflection for him and that he can find a way to improve. Because as far as I’m concerned, he’s going to be presiding through this midterm election, and I want all of us to be successful, including him at the DNC, states across the country, candidates up and down the ballot. But we can only do that if we trust each other and come together.”
