Barely a month ago, a veritable who’s who of Hollywood A-listers turned out for President Joe Biden. The event, organized by former DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, drew George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Julia Roberts.

Jimmy Kimmel moderated an interview with Biden and former President Barack Obama at the gathering in downtown Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater. Sheryl Lee Ralph sang and Jack Black entertained the star-studded crowd wearing a pair of American flag overalls.

The evening raised more than $30 million, the largest one-night campaign haul in Democratic history.

But behind the fawning praise and laughs, cracks began to appear in the public façade.

Some of the most powerful members of Hollywood, who had steadfastly supported the president, harbored some serious reservations about the 81-year-old’s mental acuity.

At times during the event, Biden’s answers meandered and Obama occasionally jumped in to redirect the conversation.

Then came Biden’s disastrous debate performance. And those very same industry stalwarts who had just feted Biden began saying he should not seek reelection.

“Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, who attended the fundraiser, was one of the first to publicly call for Biden to step aside. “Biden has to go & the Dems need to wake up,” he wrote in a column for Deadline, adding that donors should withhold checks until he did so. Within days others followed suit. Netflix co-founder and major Democratic donor Reed Hastings also called on Biden to end his reelection bid.

The most damaging blow came a week later, when Clooney wrote a blistering Op-Ed for the New York Times, saying, “The Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Clooney’s public excoriation proved to be a tipping point, creating a public relations disaster for the Biden campaign, said a confidant close to a senior Democratic leader who was not authorized to speak publicly. Soon others — including actor-filmmaker Rob Reiner — began airing similar sentiments, contributing to the pressure that culminated in the incumbent president’s extraordinary decision to drop out as the Democratic nominee.

The remarkable turn of events underlined the outsize role that Hollywood — long known as the “ATM of the Democratic Party” — plays in political campaigns and the money that fuels them.

“In the world of politics, money is what drives these things, and the fact that many in Hollywood closed up their checkbooks had a very big impact,” said Steve Caplan, adjunct instructor of public relations and advertising at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Now, entertainment heavyweights are putting their money behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ White House campaign. Hastings contributed $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris, the largest donation that he has made to a single candidate, said a person close to the Netflix co-founder who was not authorized to comment. The Information first reported the donation.

“We are all in for Kamala and have been since the moment she announced,” said Andy Spahn, a Los Angeles political consultant to media moguls such as Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. “Tremendous excitement and energy here around Kamala’s candidacy. We are all in.”

Unease over Biden’s gaffes

For months, Biden’s gaffes and stumbles became hard to ignore. He fell walking up the stairs to Air Force One; he mixed up Syria and Libya at a news conference and called Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump.”

While allies and critics alike began commenting, the campaign dismissed their concerns as isolated incidents; Biden described his debate performance as a “bad night.”

As momentum for Biden sputtered and his failings became more publicly evident, some supporters vented their frustration toward Katzenberg, one of the campaign’s co-chairs, who assured them Biden was on his game, even calling his age his “superpower.”

Katzenberg took to making comparisons to Harrison Ford starring in a new Indiana Jones movie at 80 and Mick Jagger performing on tour with the Rolling Stones, also while turning 80, the Wall Street Journal first reported.

Katzenberg declined to comment.

But Biden’s lackluster approval ratings and an unmistakable enthusiasm gap continued apace, particularly among celebrities, who were not jumping on to endorse the campaign.

Even before the debate, it was difficult to get industry players to publicly back Biden, according to someone who works closely with celebrity surrogates and was not authorized to speak publicly.

“There was a general lack of enthusiasm. Some wanted to bury their heads in the sand, and there was a legitimate group of people who felt that there was a value misalignment with what was happening in the Middle East and a larger group that did not see the benefit in speaking out,” said this individual. “It was extremely difficult, even with stalwarts.”

While Clooney and others had taken public stands, this person said there were a number of private conversations going on between about 40 prominent artists and the campaign’s leadership.

John Legend, the Grammy-winning singer, shared the concerns about Biden’s viability in an interview.

“There would be a lot of challenges to overcome if we stayed with Biden and to defeat Trump with him as our nominee,” Legend told The Times. “For months the American people were telling us that they didn’t like either choice.”

Within days of each other, Disney heir Abigail Disney and billionaire media mogul Barry Diller said they were halting any further financial support to the Biden campaign.

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel took Biden’s advisers to task for their lack of candor about his health and criticized the president for backtracking on his pledge to pass the baton after one term.

“I had a father who died at 92, but at 81 I took away his car, and it was a very simple test for me,” said Emanuel, whose brother Rahm Emanuel served as Obama’s White House chief of staff. “If you were driving from downtown Beverly Hills to Malibu, would you want Biden to do it at night?”

A dramatic shift toward Harris

On Sunday, Biden announced he would not carry on as the Democratic nominee and endorsed Harris.

It was as if the tide turned — at least in Hollywood.

“Oh God. People, and I mean this sincerely, people are giddy. They are not just happy, they are giddy,” said Donna Bojarsky, a longtime Democratic political consultant and co-founder of a nonprofit dedicated to building civic engagement in L.A. “I haven’t seen this much excitement since Barack Obama or Joe Biden’s [2020] election. … And only now are we realizing how incredibly difficult and depressing this previous situation was. Now, it’s as if an anvil has been lifted off.”

Within 24 hours, a growing list of marquee names from movies, TV, fashion, music and media including Jamie Lee Curtis, Spike Lee, Questlove and Ariana Grande signaled their support for Harris, who is widely expected to take over as her party’s presidential nominee. Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” for her presidential campaign.

“There is an increased excitement — the feeing is palpable,” said Legend. “There is an optimism that people are feeling now that they were not feeling before that we can ride this moment to victory.”

Many of those who had blasted Biden and his advisors are now galvanized around Harris, whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is a prominent Los Angeles entertainment attorney.

At the top of the list was Clooney, who in a statement to CNN praised Biden for exhibiting “true leadership,” adding, “We’re all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest.”

“An election that was previously characterized by dread and grim resignation is now characterized by the excitement of possibility,” Lindelof wrote in an email to The Times, adding that he has been a “huge fan” of Harris since she first ran for California attorney general in 2010. “I have yet to speak to a single person who hasn’t been deeply impressed by everything she has said … during this emotionally intense and complicated time. We’re wildly inspired by this potential ticket and we’ll give accordingly.’

As the praise and endorsements rolled in, so has the money.

Spahn, the political consultant, noted that Harris raised $81 million in the first 24 hours after Biden announced he would not seek reelection, a record-breaking haul. “More to come,” Spahn said.

Diller told The Times that he and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, plan to give “the maximum” allowed under federal law to the new Democratic presidential nominee.

“I think it was inevitable,” he said of Biden stepping down, noting that his preferred Democratic candidate is Harris, calling her “qualified and competent.”

And Hollywood is gearing up for another glitzy star-studded fundraiser, likely to happen before the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago, according to two individuals with knowledge of the event.

“The last 24 hours have been a lot of excitement — sign me up, where can I contribute, how do I get involved?” said Wendy Greuel, a former Los Angeles city controller who worked in President Bill Clinton’s administration and for the entertainment firm of DreamWorks SKG. “Whether it’s the entertainment industry, whether it’s activists, it has been a shot in the arm for people to engage or reengage.”

She added that Democrats were boosted by the fact a decision had been made and there is a goal to pursue.

“The sense of limbo was challenging,” Greuel said. “The excitement is we have a plan. We have a mission to defeat Donald Trump and we’re behind Vice President Kamala Harris for president of the United States. It’s a shot in the arm. People appreciate this is the pathway to have a Democratic nominee and everyone is rowing in the same direction.”

Times Staff writer Wendy Lee contributed to this report.

Former President Trump’s campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday, accusing President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of violating campaign finance laws by transferring his $91 million in fundraising cash to her new campaign. 

Biden bowed out of the presidential race on Sunday following weeks of calls for him to leave following a shaky debate performance. 

The president endorsed the vice president to run for the Democratic ticket in his place and transferred his millions of dollars in campaign cash over to her. 

The Trump campaign argued in the complaint, first reported by The New York Times and obtained by Fox News Digital, that Harris is “seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash.”

MARGIN-OF-ERROR RACE BETWEEN HARRIS, TRUMP IN NEW POLL CONDUCTED AFTER BIDEN DROPPED

David Warrington, who serves as general counsel for the Trump campaign, called the act “a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended.”

“Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it,” the filing concluded. “The Commission must not and cannot sit idly by while one candidate takes nearly one hundred million dollars from the authorized committee of another, in violation of the Act and the will of the donors who gave the money in the first place.”

Included in the complaint are Biden, Harris, “Biden for President (aka Harris for President) and Keana Spencer, as treasurer, for flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate.”

President Biden endorsed Vice President Harris to run for the Democratic ticket in his place and transferred his millions of dollars in campaign cash over to her.  (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images))

WHAT’S NEXT FOR HARRIS NOW THAT SHE’S SEEMINGLY LOCKED UP THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION?

The complaint argues that if “Kamala Harris were a candidate for something in 2024, federal law requires her to have filed a Statement of Candidacy and for her name to have appeared in the name of her authorized committee. But Kamala Harris’s name does not appear in the name of her purported authorized committee, ‘Biden for President,’ and, until Sunday, no Statement of Candidacy existed for her. Then Sunday, rather than filing her own Statement of Candidacy, she merely altered Joe Biden’s to replace his name with hers. There is no mechanism under the Act for one individual to end another’s federal candidacy by simply amending the other’s Form 2. Moreover, in that purported amended Form 2 Harris designated ‘Biden for President’ as her principal campaign committee and then renamed it. Altering a document submitted to a federal agency is a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.3.” 

The Harris campaign told Fox News Digital that the complaint was “baseless.”

David Warrington, who serves as general counsel for the Trump campaign, called the act “a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended.” (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Team Harris will continue to build on our more than 250 coordinated offices and more than 1,300 coordinated staffers across the battleground states – just like we built on the $240 million cash on hand that we had at launch this week, raising $100 million in our first 36 hours and signing up 58,000 volunteers,” the statement read.

“Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energized to defeat Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, but baseless legal claims – like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections – will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election.”

Harris’ team broke a record with their more than $100 million fundraising haul since Biden dropped out on Sunday and Harris launched her candidacy. Biden had seen much of his fundraising dry up following his difficult debate on June 27. 

In her first speech since Biden dropped out, Harris spoke to Biden campaign staffers on Monday, assuring them she would need the team to stay on to run her campaign with the election little more than 100 days away on Nov. 5. 

Vice President Kamala Harris made a grand entrance Monday during her first official visit to her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., with Freedom” by Beyoncé blasting as her soundtrack.

Beyoncé gave the former senator from California permission to use her song throughout the presidential campaign, which manifested after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 campaign Sunday and endorsed Harris. A spokesperson for Beyoncé told CNN that Harris’ team had received “quick approval” just hours before she walked out to the song.

Although Beyoncé hasn’t officially endorsed Harris, who dropped out of the 2020 presidential race in 2019, 10 months before election day, that the “Texas Hold Em” singer is allowing her song to be used hints at some support for the Democratic hopeful.

On the other hand, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, shared her support for Harris in a Sunday post on Instagram. “New, Youthful, Sharp, energy !!!! You asked for it and our President Biden did what was best for the country ! Putting personal Ego, power and fame aside . That is the definition of a great leader,” Knowles said. “Thank you, President Biden, for your service and your leadership . Go Vice President Kamala Harris for President. Let’s Go.”

The singer definitely leans Democrat: Right before election day in 2020, Beyoncé posted a photo on Instagram showing herself in a Balmain hat with an “I voted” sticker and a Biden-Harris mask. “Come thru, Texas! #VOTE,” she wrote in the caption.

In 2013, she famously sang the national anthem at then-President Obama’s inauguration, and she and husband Jay-Z headlined a pre-election concert in 2016 for then-candidate Hillary Clinton in Cleveland. Her backup dancers wore blue pantsuits with shirts that read, “I’m with her.”

“There was a time when a woman’s opinion did not matter. If you were Black, white, Mexican, Asian, Muslim, educated, poor or rich … if you were a woman, it did not matter,” Beyoncé told the Cleveland crowd. “I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and knowing that her possibilities are limitless … And that’s why I am with her.”

“Freedom,” featuring Kendrick Lamar, first appeared on Beyoncé’s sixth studio album, “Lemonade,” which was released in April 2016. The Times’ music critic Mikael Wood said in his review of the album, “The highly personal ‘Lemonade’ upends expectations in another way, which is the turn it seems to take from [the track] ‘Formation,’ a statement of radical Black positivity that suggested Beyoncé was readying an explicitly political album.”

The duo performed the song together onstage at the 2016 BET Awards with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech playing over the track as the song opened.