In a blow to Senator Sanders’ campaign on Thursday evening, the Democratic National Committee has suspended the campaign from viewing any information on the DNC database while an investigation is launched into the details of a breach of the website.
Sanders’ campaign acknowledged that a staffer had accessed Hillary Clinton’s voter data after the site dropped the firewall between the two candidates’ information. The campaign reports that this is not the first time that the site has failed to keep the candidate information separate, but the campaign is taking full responsibility for the violation.
The staffer accused of accessing the files, Sanders’ national data director, Josh Uretsky, has been fired.
The vendor which manages the DNC’s site admits that there was a technical issue which allowed campaigns on both sides to access one another’s information.
The Sanders campaign released this statement in response to the issues with the vendor:
“Sadly, the vendor who runs the DNC’s voter file program continues to make serious errors,” it said. “Our campaign months ago alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor.”
The staffer who was fired claimed he only access the data to prove to the DNC that it was possible, and that he had intended to take proof of the breach to the DNC.
The Sanders campaign accused the DNC of actively trying to undermine their campaign, saying that the removal of access was an “inappropriate overreaction.”
