Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager said on Friday that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is trying to undermine his campaign in an effort to help rival candidate Hillary Clinton.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver announced the Sanders campaign would be suing the DNC if the party did not restore the Sanders campaign’s access to the party’s central voter database. The DNC locked the Sanders campaign out of the database after it was discovered that a staffer for Sanders allegedly accessed Hillary Clinton’s voter data file while the DNC-managed database was experiencing security issues.
BREAKING: WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders campaign manager says DNC is “actively attempting to undermine” campaign.— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) December 18, 2015
The Sanders campaign claims it fired the staffer after learning about the alleged improper database access. In response, the DNC banned Bernie Sanders and his campaign from accessing any of the DNC’s voter data–even data for Sanders’ owner supporters that the Sanders campaign paid the DNC to house.
Why doesn’t the DNC just fix their security issues and let the Sanders campaign access their own data?— Jimmy (@JimmyPrinceton) December 18, 2015
The issue isn’t just that Sanders is denied access to the party’s data, but that he is now locked out of the data he paid for and collected himself.
B/C of the data breach @SenSanders is also blocked from using the separate NH Dem Party voter file, which the campaign paid to use #fitn— James Pindell (@JamesPindell) December 18, 2015
The move to block Sanders from accessing his own data for an unspecified period of time comes on the heels of several other key announcements that Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, claims were made to help the Clinton campaign. The scheduling decisions leading up to Saturday’s Democratic debate have come under fire as an intentional effort to aid the Clinton campaign, as they appear to have been made to discourage coverage and viewership of the debates.
“If you look at a pattern of conduct […] it looks like in this case they’re trying to help the Clinton campaign,” Weaver said Friday afternoon.
Weaver wasn’t the only one to notice the implications of DNC’s actions against Sanders.
The flip side of Dems' one big voter platform controlled by the party is that the party chair can apparently decide to kneecap a campaign.— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) December 18, 2015
Former DNC Communications Director —> https://t.co/oSesVKCMrn— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 18, 2015
Sanders told reporters last September that he didn’t plan to run as an independent if he lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, but if the DNC continues to change the rules and tilt the playing field toward Hillary Clinton, that could very well change.
