Inside the Biden effort to recruit Nikki Haley donors to help defeat Donald Trump

• President Joe Biden's team is successfully recruiting some former donors to Nikki Haley's campaign.
• With Haley formally out of the primary race, this effort has gone into overdrive.
• Winning over former Haley donors bolsters Biden's campaign coffers while also taking these donors off the field for Donald Trump.

A few days after former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential primary on March 6, veteran media executive and Haley backer Harry Sloan got a call from movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who asked Sloan to help President Joe Biden take on Donald Trump in the general election.

Sloan agreed to help raise money for Biden's reelection effort and try to reel in Republican-aligned business leaders to get behind the president, he told CNBC in a recent interview.

"People I know who are generally business Republicans, they're going to hear from me" about helping Biden, Sloan said. The former chair of MGM said he has already reached out to some of the people in his Rolodex, and he plans to host a fundraiser for Biden later this year.

Sloan is among at least half a dozen former Haley bundlers who have decided to help Biden — and not Trump — since Haley ended her campaign, according to a source familiar with the effort, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A co-chair of the Biden campaign, Katzenberg has been trying to recruit wealthy Haley supporters into Biden's camp since at least February.

But now, with Haley formally out of the race, that effort has gone into overdrive.

Sloan and other Haley supporters have also heard from the Biden campaign's finance chair, Rufus Gifford, who said he belongs to a WhatsApp group called "Haley Supporters for Biden."

For Biden's team,