WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) — The campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), I-Vt., is threatened to sue the DNC on Friday, accusing the committee of taking the campaign hostage when it suspended its access to the Democratic voter file.
Jeff Weaver held a press conference Friday afternoon after the DNC suspended the campaign’s access to voter data when it was revealed the Sanders campaign accessed private data from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Sanders camp reacted by firing the staffer responsible for downloading the data, saying it was a low-level staffer who made a mistake.
Earlier Friday morning, the Sanders campaign blamed the breach on the DNC’s software vendor NGP VAN.
Weaver doubled down Friday afternoon, calling the DNC’s response “heavy-handed” and reiterating an earlier claim that the Sanders campaign was aware of a security problem early on and had taken steps to notify the DNC. Weaver said the staffer responsible did not intentionally access Clinton’s data, and that the suspension from the Democratic voter database would undermine the Vermont senator’s presidential campaign.
DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) issued a statement following Weaver’s press conference.
“I have personally reached out to Senator Sanders to make sure that he is aware of the situation,” Schultz’s statement said, calling for a report from Sanders’ campaign on how the data was used, if at all. “When we receive this report from the Sanders campaign, we will make a determination on re-enabling the campaign’s access to the system.”
When the breach was first revealed Friday morning, Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs said: “On more than one occasion, the vendor has dropped the firewall between the data of different Democratic campaigns. Our campaign months ago alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor.”
The voter file in question is a master list of Democratic voters which the DNC owns and rents to campaigns. Campaigns add their own information gathered by field workers and volunteers. Firewalls between the campaigns are supposed to prevent breaches. Politico reported that firewalls were compromised Wednesday due to a software error.
The incident was revealed just a day before the final Democratic presidential debate of 2015, set to take place Saturday in Manchester, N.H.
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