Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has regained access to a crucial voter database after the Democratic National Committee (DNC) cut the campaign off from the party's database, which prompted the Sanders campaign to sue the DNC for breaching its contract.
"It's resolved. DNC capitulated. We get to see voter files by Saturday morning," Michael Briggs of the Sanders campaign told ABC News Friday evening.
The DNC confirmed that the matter has been resolved: "The Sanders campaign has now complied with the DNC's request to provide the information that we have requested of them. Based on this information, we are restoring the Sanders campaign's access to the voter file, but will continue to investigate to ensure that the data that was inappropriately accessed has been deleted and is no longer in possession of the Sanders campaign. The Sanders campaign has agreed to fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach."
The Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit against the DNC on Friday, claiming that the party breached its contract with the campaign by blocking it from viewing its voter records after Sanders staffers improperly accessed the private voter records of rival front-runner Hillary Clinton.
"The voter data is vital to the fundraising and voter identification efforts of all presidential candidates," said the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. The campaign was forced to halt most field operations and estimated that it would lose $600,000 in donations each day that it didn't have access to the database, which includes indispensable information collected about registered voters, such as name, address, email address, telephone number and vote history.
It all started on Wednesday when the vendor who maintains the DNC's database created a security vulnerability in the firewall while updating the software. Four Sanders staffers accessed the database on at least 24 occasions, conducting searches and saving campaign lists of potential voters, according to an audit released by the Clinton campaign, reported Reuters. The Sanders campaign fired the supervisory staffer but not the three others.
Following the breach, the DNC suspended the campaign's use of the database without notice. Sanders argued in his lawsuit that the contract between him and the DNC mandates that he must receive a written notice describing any issue and 10 days to fix the issue before the party can cancel the contract.
"The DNC's unwarranted, unilateral suspension of the Campaign's Voter Data access directly impacts one of the nation's most important electoral races, and carries political implications on a national scale," the suit said. "The DNC should not be permitted to tip the scales of the Democratic presidential primary without clear justification and contractual cause. The fairness of this pivotal national election should not be compromised because of security flaws introduced by the DNC and its vendor."
The lawsuit asked for "immediate restoration" of Sanders' access to the voter database, damages in an amount to be determined at trial "but presently known to exceed $75,000," and any other "further and different relief as the court deems just and proper."
Clinton's campaign held a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon. "Our data was stolen," campaign manager Robby Mook said, claiming that the data stolen was a "strategic roadmap" for their campaign in early voting states, according to MSNBC. "This was a very egregious breach and our data was stolen. This was not an inadvertent glimpse into our data. It was not as the Sanders campaign has described it 'a mistake.'"
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallow said they are "asking that the Sanders campaign and the DNC work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign account."
Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs called the allegations "outrageous" and said he is "not aware of one piece of data in the possession of our campaign that resulted from the DNC vendor's firewall failure," according to Reuters.
"Sadly, the vendor who runs the DNC's voter file program continues to make serious errors. On more than one occasion, the vendor has dropped the firewall between the data of different Democratic campaigns," said Briggs. "We are working with the DNC and the vendor and hope that this kind of lapse will not occur again."
