During a short very short window of vulnerability, Bernie Sanders campaign staffers, including his national data director, accessed confidential Clinton campaign data hosted by a vendor contracted by the Democratic National Committee.
According to an audit obtained by Bloomberg, Sanders staffers exploited a temporary glitch in the DNC's voter database on Wednesday to save lists created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In response, Sanders' team fired national data director Josh Uretsky while the DNC stopped the campaign from accessing all of the DNC's data. [...]
The logs show that the Vermont senator’s team created at least 24 lists during the 40-minute breach, which started at 10:40 a.m., and saved those lists to their personal folders. The Sanders searches included New Hampshire lists related to likely voters, "HFA Turnout 60-100" and "HFA Support 50-100," that were conducted and saved by Uretsky. Drapkin's account searched for and saved lists including less likely Clinton voters, "HFA Support <30" in Iowa, and "HFA Turnout 30-70"' in New Hampshire.
The Sanders campaign evidently copied very useful information that would benefit their own campaign but the Sanders campaign and many of their supporters would have you believe they're the real victims because they've been temporarily locked out of the DNC's database.
Josh Uretsky, the former data director for the Sanders campaign who was fired after the breach, appeared on MSNBC today where he claimed they copied Clinton campaign data just to alert the DNC that a breach was possible.
In a phone interview, Josh Uretsky told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki that the Sanders staffers “wanted to document and understand the scope of the problem so that we could report it accurately.” Uretsky was fired Friday after news of the breach broke. [...]
“Somebody leaves the front door open and you left a note inside the front door saying you left the door open. Then maybe you went and checked the side door, too, to make sure that door was closed,” Uretsky said.
I don't buy this explanation for a second, but even if you do it's more or less the same explanation the likes of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning used to justify their breaches of government databases.
Because Uretsky was fired after the breach suggests to me that Sanders himself did not buy that explanation either, but today the Sanders campaign is fundraising off a conspiracy theory that they're the victims of a DNC/Hillary Clinton plot.
To be clear, the DNC has temporarily suspended the Sanders' campaign access to the database while they ensure that a similar breach won't happen again.
The Sanders campaign would have you believe that the DNC is engaging in a conspiracy theory to "tip the scale" towards Hillary Clinton even though Clinton already has a commanding lead in the Democratic presidential primary race. It's not as Clinton needs special help or that Bernie ever had much of a chance to win.
It's possible Bernie Sanders himself may not believe he is a victim of a conspiracy, but if that's the case it's evident he has no control over his campaign staff or the message of victimhood they're promoting.