Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the chair of the Democratic National Committee, on Friday defended the party’s decision to suspend Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign from the DNC’s voter file after one or more campaign staffers viewed confidential information stored by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC that by temporarily suspending the Sanders campaign, the DNC is just following an agreement they have with each campaign.
“They are prohibited from accessing another campaign’s proprietary information, and we have the ability to suspend that campaign’s access to the voter file in order to make sure that we can preserve the integrity of the voter file and ensure that there is confidence in it,” she said.
During a brief breach on the software managing the DNC’s voter files on Wednesday, campaigns were able to view voter files stored by other campaigns. Typically, firewalls prevent campaigns from seeing each others’ information stored by the DNC. But for a brief period on Wednesday, NGP VAN, the vendor that manages the DNC’s voter files, had an issue with a new piece of the software that temporarily made the information available to other campaigns.
During that period, at least one Sanders staffer viewed the voter files of Clinton’s campaign, and Sander’s national data director Josh Uretsky was fired.
Supporters of the Sanders campaign and the liberal group MoveOn.org balked at the DNC’s decision to suspend the Sanders campaign on Friday. A MoveOn petition says, “Withholding access to this critical information at such a critical time for the campaign is equivalent to sabotage.”
When asked about this on MSNBC, Wasserman Schultz said that she believes Sanders supporters would have expected the DNC to suspend the Clinton campaign if Sanders’ files had been accessed.
“I am exploring what options are available to us, but until I am fully advised by independent experts how best to approach this, as quickly as possible, the only available remedy for us is to make sure that we cannot have the information manipulated,” she said. “And the only way to do that is to temporarily suspend access to the voter file.”
Uretsky said on Friday that he did not seek out the Clinton campaign’s data intentionally, but viewed it when checking to see how much of Sanders’ data was available to other campaigns. He said he didn’t believe that the campaign saved any of the Clinton data.
But on MSNBC, Wasserman Schultz indicated that the campaign may have downloaded data.
“Staff on the sanders campaign not only viewed the Clinton campaign’s proprietary data, but from what we’re being told, downloaded it, exported it and downloaded it,” she said.
NGP VAN said in a statement on Friday that only one campaign inappropriately accessed another’s on Wednesday. NGP VAN said it was unaware of any similar previous breaches, despite claims from the Sanders campaign that this has happened before.
Yet another high-handed move by DWS that creates the appearance of favoritism toward HRC. She’s scheduled a debate for Saturday night, when anyone watching TV will not want to watch the debate (there’s a NFL game on, and as a Jets fan, I’ll be watching that instead), and the next debate is scheduled during the NFL playoffs. I say this as someone who supports HRC (I feel the Bern too): it’s beyond time for DWS to step down as chair of the DNC.
(replying to myself here…)
Furthermore, these debates are not for the political junkies and other Dem voters who have made up their minds–they’re supposed to be for the undecided Dems, as well as open-minded Independent voters and even Republicans (if any of those unicorns still exist). How many of those folks are going to want to spend their Saturday night watching the Democrats debate? Not many, and she knows it! She’s afraid a good showing by Bernie might cause some people to switch to him, so her debate schedule is the political equivalent of the old four-corners offense–slow down the game, and take time off the clock. Terrible approach for the party, which has a chance to offer voters a real, intelligent alternative to the insanity of the GOP. Horrible.
I’m planning to vote for Hillary Clinton, but this wench has me rethinking that. If I want that kind of blatant political backstabbery, I’ll join the GOP. My feeling was that Bernie Sanders, while a laudable person with a great message just was frankly, a little too old and not physically strong enough for a job that has aged Barack Obama a good 25 years… But the hell with it, if Debbie WS is going to play this game, I’ll do my utmost to see that it blows up in her face.
I wonder what cabinet-level position Debbie’s figuring she’ll get in the Clinton Administration.