Until this moment, almost everything here has involved the GOP
opposition, and we have been careful not to get into internecine battles
with those on the Dem side sans a checkered flag from the campaign.
Jennifer Palmieri's statement opens the door to questions and issues the
Sanders team needs to address. Thank you, Jennifer!
Statements
We’re
glad that the Sanders campaign and DNC reached an agreement last night
and that the Sanders campaign has agreed to an independent audit of the
data breach.
This saga - and having our campaign’s hard work
violated by the Sanders’ campaign - has been disturbing to our campaign
and the volunteers who worked hard to build a strong organization. But
it has also been a distraction from the issues that the American people
care about. We think those issues should be the focus of the
debate tonight: issues like raising wages, access to healthcare, and
keeping America safe. However, given news that Senator Sanders and his
team apparently want to make this topic the centerpiece of their debate strategy, here are some questions that should be on the table.
The
Sanders campaign was able to access (and save) 24 different lists of
proprietary Clinton campaign information, as seen in their NGPVAN
activity logs. Here, for example, is a Sanders staffer searching for and saving a list of voters that the Clinton campaign identified as persuadable in Iowa.
Let’s
be clear about how the VAN system works: when you look at the log,
“saving” means an attempt to store the data to your own account–and
there are reports that there were preliminary attempts to export the
data into excel sheets. They knew what they were doing. Which brings me
to my next point.
2: Why'd your campaign claim it was an accident?
In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Tad Devine claimed this was all a “mistake.” A mistake?
NGPVAN’s
audit found that Sanders staffers conducted 25 targeted searches of
Clinton campaign data, just like the example above. Let me reiterate
what this being a “mistake” would mean. Take a look at this pull out
from the audit activity logs.
For this to be a “mistake,” the Sanders campaign would have had to accidentally…
- Searched for the voters we've identified as being unlikely to support Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary
- Saved that list into their own account folder
- Searched for the voters we've identified as supporters who are very likely to turn out to vote in the South Carolina primary
- Saved that list into their own account folder
- Searched for the voters we've identified as supporters who are unlikely to turn out to vote in the South Carolina primary
This is just a sample. They pulled 21 more lists. That seems hardly accidental to me.
3: Why did the Sanders campaign claim that only one staffer was involved in accessing Clinton campaign data?
Contrary to their claims, there were four staffers
involved. In fact, from the audit logs provided by NGPVAN, the staffer
they fired wasn’t even the person involved in accessing the most data.
In
initial reports, the Sanders campaign claimed that the “single staffer”
involved in accessing Clinton campaign data was at the junior level.
Tad Devine even went so far as to say that he’d never met the guy.
Josh Uretsky, the staffer who was fired, was the campaign’s most senior data strategist.
From his Linkedin page: 
Our data director is involved in our strategic, day-to-day decision making. That’s a pretty broad interpretation of junior.
In conclusion...
To
most voters, this will all seem pretty arcane. They care about raising
wages for their family. They care about security for their family. They
care about who’s going to keep them safe. They certainly don’t spend
much time thinking about campaign data theft.
With that said, if
Senator Sanders intends to make his campaign’s theft of our data a
rallying point, he should have to answer these questions. His campaign
took advantage of a security flaw to access and retain proprietary
Clinton campaign information. We don’t know if they still have it. Those
are all facts. No amount of misdirection changes those facts.
We look forward to tonight’s debate.
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