Washington: Presidential aspirant Senator Bernie Sanders has sued his own Democratic party for blocking his campaign from accessing its digital database considered essential to run his electioneering. In a lawsuit, Sanders alleged his campaign is losing USD 600,000 in donations each day as it cannot access the Democratic Party’s data.
The move came after the Democratic Party suspended Sanders’ campaign access to its data following a security breach. It alleged that the Sander’s campaign accessed and intruded into the data of Clinton’s campaign. “By their action, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable. Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want, but they are not going to sabotage our campaign — one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 Campaign Manager said in a statement.
In a statement, Hillary for America press secretary Brian Fallon hoped for a swift resolution of the matter. “We hope that the court will resolve this matter tonight and the Sanders campaign has access to their voter files right away, with adequate protections of our proprietary information, which we understand could be completed in short order,” he said.
Fallon alleged his campaign’s 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. “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,” he said.
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data,and in doing so violated the agreement that all the presidential campaigns have signed with it.
As a result, DNC suspended the Sanders campaign’s access to the system until it is provided with a full accounting of whether or not this information was used and the way in which it was disposed. “I have personally reached out to Senator Sanders to make sure that he is aware of the situation. When we receive this report from the Sanders campaign, we will make a determination on re-enabling the campaign’s access to the system,” he said.
