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Stressed-out Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin faced a formal human resources complaint after allegedly throwing his phone at a junior aide’s desk at the party’s Washington headquarters in early July, The New York Times reported Sunday, as financial concerns and internal tensions placed his leadership under scrutiny.
The cause of the alleged outburst remained unclear, but one DNC source briefed on the episode described it as worsening conduct.
“It’s just f—ing unacceptable. This is spiraling behavior,” the source told NOTUS.
The Times described the show of frustration as a sign of Martin’s “fraying nerves.”
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The Times cited six people familiar with the incident, none of whom witnessed it firsthand. Their accounts differed over how forcefully Martin threw the phone, but the newspaper reported that it landed on the aide’s desk while Martin was reprimanding the staffer and led to a formal HR complaint.
NOTUS reported that five sources said Martin threw the phone in the aide’s direction after a scheduled period of donor and political calls. The phone did not strike the staffer, but several aides were shaken, according to the outlet. Martin apologized to the aide during an HR meeting on the following business day.
The reports came as the DNC faced a substantial financial disadvantage less than four months before the midterm elections. Federal Election Commission records showed the committee ended June with $16.3 million in cash and $18.5 million in debt. By comparison, the Republican National Committee reported $128.5 million in cash and no debt.
Martin is leading the Democratic Party in trying to win back control of the House and Senate in the midterms, in what is historically a buoyant year for the party out of power. Every president this century has seen their party lose the majority of at least one chamber in their midterms.
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According to the New York Times, he’s resorted to joking about his job security and is “frustrated with the tarnished public image of a party that he plainly loves and has devoted his life to.” He has also largely disappeared from public interviews in recent months following criticism of the party’s bungled release of its 2024 “autopsy.”
Fox News Digital reported in November that the DNC confirmed opening a $20 million line of credit and drawing $15 million. The committee pledged its partially owned Washington headquarters as collateral for the loan.
A DNC official said in a statement to The New York Post that the use of the building as collateral followed previous committee practices.
“This is not new. The loan documents were publicly released in November, and the DNC’s building was also used as collateral in our prior lines of credit in 2019, 2018, 2014, and many other years,” the official said.
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The Times reported that the committee asked some vendors to delay submitting invoices until after the midterms.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, DNC Executive Director Roger Lau characterized those requests as routine contract discussions.
“This is nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes,” Lau said.
Martin defended the committee’s strategy in a Substack essay last week, saying it raised $154.8 million from grassroots and major donors through June, compared with $95.2 million during the comparable 2017-2018 period.
“The current DNC has raised the most money of any DNC without the White House in the 198-year history of the Democratic Party,” Martin said in a Monday Substack. “But a party is not a savings account. Its purpose is to build power.”
While the DNC responded to financial questions, it did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request regarding Martin’s alleged conduct with the junior aide.
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