Biden fundraising 'dream team' creates $140 million war chest to take on Donald Trump

• President Joe Biden's fundraising operation is helmed by a "dream team" that is helping to build a war chest to take on former President Donald Trump.
• Movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and longtime Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford are among the Biden advisers being given credit for the operation's success.
• Katzenberg has been speaking with donors to Republican Nikki Haley, and trying to recruit them to support Biden.

President Joe Biden's $140 million campaign war chest has been bolstered by a group of loyal advisers and fundraisers that some party strategists call a "dream team" effort to defeat the likely Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The recent boom in fundraising can be traced primarily to five people: media executive and Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg, former State Department official Rufus Gifford, campaign finance director Michael Pratt, longtime Biden adviser Jen O'Malley Dillon and Julie Chávez Rodriguez, the president's 2024 campaign manager.

"They have kind of put together a dream team in fundraising," said Jim Messina, who served as former President Barack Obama's campaign manager for his successful 2012 reelection campaign.

Katzenberg has been speaking with donors to Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley and trying to recruit them to support Biden. "We are actively courting them," he told CNBC in a recent interview.

"I've only done it with a handful of super high end donors and I would just say it has been well received. No one has said 'leave us alone, we don't want to talk to you,'" said Katzenberg

Haley insists she is staying in the race, despite polls showing her on track to lose Saturday's Republican primary in her home state of South Carolina to Trump.

But