DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a US Congresswoman from Florida, defended the ban, repeatedly comparing the Sanders campaign to someone who found the front door of a house open and stealing the things inside. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said the breach was accidental, fired the staffer, and threatened to go to court if access to the data was not restored.
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Adding to the Sanders campaign’s frustration, Weaver said this week’s incident isn’t the first time the contractor for the DNC system has failed to maintain its security.
On Friday, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the new scandal brewing inside the Democratic presidential campaign with the data breach involving the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns (plus the Sanders camp suing the Democratic National Committee), but it was the CBS Evening News that sought to downplay the story by not covering the “brewing” “family feud.” . He said the DNC is “not going to sabotage” the Sanders campaign.
DNC spokesman Luis Miranda said Friday that the party committee “places a high priority on maintaining the security of our system and protecting the data in it”.
That decision infuriated Weaver, who said the party had cut Sanders’ team off from the “lifeblood of any campaign”.
Weaver said Friday that Clinton’s campaign data “should not have been looked at”.
She said the error in the software was quickly fixed, and the DNC has been “reasurred…that the incident did not expose any data to the public or any external entity”.
“This is incredibly disappointing”, Mook said.
That’s according to a person familiar with the data logs and the breach.
A former data manager for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign says he didn’t steal any confidential voter data, but was rather trying to expose a bug in a DNC database.
WEAVER: I can tell that you that this campaign, in an official capacity, does not possess any data, does not retain any data, doesn’t want any of their data. “The fact that data was accessed inappropriately is completely unacceptable, and the DNC expects each campaign to operate with integrity going forward with respect to the voter file”, she continued.
But Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the Clinton campaign was informed the Sanders staff breached Clinton data in 25 searches by four different accounts, and the data was saved in Sanders campaign accounts.
He claimed that the Sanders campaign had notified the party of a similar firewall “failure” in October, which was not corrected. Sanders’ team argues that it shouldn’t be “punished for the carelessness of the DNC and its third-party vendor”.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., does not name Wasserman Schultz personally, but does reveal the Sanders campaign leased the database for $120,000, and that access to it expires on December 31. The Sanders campaign agreed late on Friday night to do submit to the outside audit. The campaign said that the more serious damage from not being able to continue normal campaign operations and communicate with supporters was immeasurable.
The DNC, though, fired back.
Sanders supporters and liberal groups have reacted to the news of Sanders’ campaign being punished by questioning the neutrality of the DNC, hinting that the body is in the tank for Clinton. He also recently picked up major endorsements from the Communications Workers of America Union and Democracy for America on Thursday.
Party insiders said they were anxious about the effect the brouhaha would have on the primary and the party’s image.
The database now inaccessible to Sanders’ campaign includes information from voters across the nation and is used by campaigns to set strategy, especially in the early voting states. “That’s why it is so troubling to see the DNC engage in such heavy-handed favoritism benefitting Hillary Clinton”. The vendor is charged with storing all of the data and information that volunteers for the campaigns collects.
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At a press conference, Weaver accused the committee of seeking to undermine the Sanders campaign.
