The Clinton campaign called the data breach by rival Democrat Bernie Sanders’ campaign “very disturbing” and an “act of theft” that discredits the Vermont senator’s campaign.
“We’ve had a lot of questions recently about the data breach and we’ve been very concerned about how the Sanders campaign misrepresented what happened,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said during a press call on Friday evening. “This was a very egregious breach and our data was stolen … it was not as the Sanders campaign explained ‘a mistake.'”
The Clinton team suggested that the Sanders campaign should bring in an outside audit to figure out what happened. Even though the Sanders campaign said none of the data was saved, the Clinton campaign claimed it has all been stored, and thus stolen from them, not once but 25 separate times.
If you are so proud of your grassroots organization, you should not need to resort to stealing campaign data.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) December 18, 2015
Furthermore, Mook claimed this extremely important, and the “strategic roadmap” to the former secretary of state’s campaign. They also said that it was uniquely “disappointing” that the Sanders campaign has tried to “downplay” the breach far too much and that they should “acknowledge the severity of what they did.”
“This breach was totally unacceptable and may have bee a violation of the law. We’re particularly disturbed that they are using stealing data as a reason to raise money for their campaign,” Mook said. “Stop politicizing and make sure what happened is remedied.”
Although the Clinton campaign expressed extreme displeasure and concern about the incident, they noted that the issue should be resolved between the DNC and the Vermont Senator’s campaign, as they did not want to be involved with it. Sanders and Clinton will face off Saturday night during the third Democratic debate, where this issue will likely take center stage.
