Sanders threatens to sue DNC
© Greg Nash

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersFormer Sanders press secretary: Lowering income threshold for stimulus checks would undermine Biden administration's COVID-19 response Biden sitting down for pre-Super Bowl CBS interview Coronavirus relief poses early test of Democratic unity MORE's (I-Vt.) campaign manager said it would take the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to federal court Friday afternoon if it does not lift the suspension to the campaign's voter database.

"If the Democratic National Committee holds our data hostage ... we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking relief," said Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager. He added that the party had an "inappropriate reaction" to reports that a Sanders campaign staffer accessed Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonSeniors delivered for Joe Biden — now he must deliver for us Environmental justice fails both the environment and justice Greene lashes out over attempts to remove her from committees MORE voter data.
 
The DNC suspended its access to the party's voter database, which includes the Sanders campaign's own data, after revelations that a campaign staffer obtained private data from rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. 
 
Weaver told reporters that the campaign alerted the DNC about this problem two months ago, when it believed that some of its data had been "lost to one of the other campaigns." 
 
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In an interview with CNN's "Wolf" immediately after the Sanders campaign's press conference, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz denied that Sanders's voter information had been compromised two months ago, as Weaver claimed. 
 
She brushed off the threat of legal action. "The Sanders campaign doesn’t have anything other than bluster to put out there," she said on CNN. 
 
"We are following the agreement that both parties entered into. ... I'm confident that this is the decision that they would expect from us and it’s the same decision that we would make if the shoe was on the other foot."
 
She said the party's investigation found that the Sanders campaign "not only viewed it, but they exported it and downloaded it."  
 
News of the suspension comes the day after Sanders landed endorsements from the Communications Workers of America union and from the progressive Democracy for America (DFA). It also comes just a day before the third Democratic debate, which Sanders's spokesman Michael Briggs slammed on Friday for being scheduled for a time when interest is likely to be low.
 
By suspending the Sanders campaign from access to its own database, the DNC was "actively attempting to undermine our campaign," Weaver said, accusing the party of tilting the scales for the Clinton campaign.
 
"Clearly in this case it looks like they are trying to help the Clinton campaign," he said. 
 
“I don’t know the motivation of every single person at the DNC, but you look at the pattern of conduct,” Weaver continued. “We’ve obviously had concerns about the Saturday night debate schedule and its impact on the ability of campaigns to get their message out.
 
"We are taking on the establishment and I'm sure that there are people in the Democratic establishment not happy with the success that Sen. Sanders has had." 
 
All three Democratic candidates have access to the DNC’s voter file. It acts as a two-way street, allowing candidates to rely on the party’s data to help target voters while also sharing campaign-specific data with the party. While the party is able to see the master file, candidates are not supposed to be able to access data obtained by their rivals. 
 
Wasserman Schultz informed DNC members in an email obtained by The Hill earlier Friday that the Sanders campaign had access to “voter targeting data” from Clinton’s campaign for about 45 minutes, emphasizing that no financial, donor or volunteer data was exposed. 

The letter, which was sent out to all reporters just as the Sanders press conference got under way, adds that the error did not lead to any public exposure of the data, only between the campaigns, and that the DNC’s vendor is investigating what went wrong and if anyone else had improperly accessed the data. 

It also lays out the stipulations for Sanders to regain access to the voter file — “until the DNC is provided with a full accounting of whether or not this information was used and the way in which it was disposed.”

Clinton's camp has largely remained quiet throughout the controversy, releasing a short statement by spokesman Brian Fallon two hours after the Sanders press conference. 

“We were informed that our proprietary data was breached by Sanders campaign staff in 25 searches by four different accounts and that this data was saved into the Sanders' campaign account," the two-sentence statement said. "We are asking that the Sanders campaign and the DNC work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign's account and that the Sanders campaign only have access to their own data.” 

Democracy for America, the major progressive group that endorsed Sanders on Thursday, panned the DNC’s decision in a statement. 

"The Democratic National Committee's decision to attack the campaign that figured out the problem, rather than go after the vendor that made the mistake, is profoundly damaging to the party's Democratic process,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. 

“DNC leaders should immediately reverse this disturbing decision before the committee does even more to bring its neutrality in the race for President into question." 

Josh Uretsky, the fired Sanders staffer, told ABC News in an interview that his actions were not nefarious and that he had tried to investigate the failure while being sure to leave a record of his actions to prove his honest motives. 

“The breach was in no way our fault. I saw it and attempted to investigate and attempted to do it in a transparent manner,” he told the network, adding that he does not believe the campaign took any data or tried to “gain anything out of it." 

“We saw a security breach and we tried to assess it and understand it. … I knew full well that I was creating a record that the administrators could see.”

-- Jonathan Easley contributed

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