“Their staff stole data from their campaign and they are now fundraising off it”.
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But for all the bluster Friday, Clinton could choose to downplay the issue entirely once on the debate stage – as Sanders did with his dismissal of questions about her use of email. The petition accuses the “Democratic Party elite” of preferring a “coronation” over a “competitive campaign”.
The Sanders operative added: “Clearly, they were very concerned about their prospects in court”. The staffers had been able to do so because of a glitch in the voter file during a routine software update by the vendor, NGP VAN.
In response, the DNC temporarily turned off Sanders’ access to the database and asked for an accounting of how the information was used and disposed of.
The voter information is extremely important for campaigns with potential supporters.
Hours later, the Sanders camp filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington seeking an immediate restoration of access to the database.
The campaign estimated donation losses would be $600,000 a day.
“We need our data, which has been stolen by the DNC”.
The incident comes at an inauspicious time for Sanders, the Democratic socialist who is trying to stop the heavily favoured Clinton from running away with the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
A deal has been reached between the Bernie Sanders campaign and the Democratic National Committee to allow the campaign to regain access to voter files, Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs told CNN.
Clinton came into the year as the inevitable nominee – even Sanders’ camp has been surprised about how well he has performed this year – against a weak Democratic bench exemplified by former Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley and ex-Virginia Sen. “We believe this audit should proceed immediately, and, pending its findings, we expect further disciplinary action to be taken as appropriate”, her campaign said in a statement.
According to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda, the data systems vendor, NGP VAN, alerted the DNC about Wednesday’s software patch. The DNC has a huge voter database, which campaigns can rent and which can help keep their own files current.
Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, accused the Democratic establishment of actively trying to “undermine our campaign” and helping the Clinton campaign. The campaign did not have authorization to view the Clinton data, but the information did not spread more widely.
Trevelyan called the bug “a brief isolated issue, and we are not aware of any previous reports of such data being inappropriately available”. “By lunchtime, it was resolved”. Experts said the Sanders campaign employees who accessed it without authorization appear to have broken the law.
Upon learning of the breach, the DNC suspended the Sanders campaign from accessing the system-a punishment that has left them with no way of knowing where they are in the outreach process, just weeks before the first primary contests begin.
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“To the best of my knowledge, nobody took anything that would have given the campaign any benefit”, Uretsky told CNN.
