US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has regained access to crucial voter files, after taking the Democratic National Committee to court and accusing party leaders of trying to undermine his White House bid.
The DNC had blocked access to the voter data on Friday after a Sanders campaign staffer improperly accessed Clinton's voter files, prompting charges of theft from the Clinton campaign and setting off a bitter political fight in what had been a relatively peaceful Democratic nominating race.
The DNC agreed to restore access to the files after Sanders sued the committee in US District Court, accusing it of improperly suspending the campaign's access to the voter data. The DNC said the Sanders campaign had supplied information about the breach and promised to cooperate with an investigation.
"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," DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.
The political brawl came one day before a debate between the presidential rivals, fuelling rising tensions and highlighting complaints from Sanders and his liberal allies that the DNC is trying to help Clinton, particularly by limiting the number of debates and scheduling them on low-viewership periods like Saturday nights.
"In this case it looks like they are trying to help the Clinton campaign," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said at a news conference on Friday afternoon before filing the lawsuit. He accused the DNC of taking the Sanders campaign "hostage" by blocking its access to the files.
"We need our data, which has been stolen by the DNC. That's what we want back," Weaver said.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters in a conference call the Sanders staff had taken vital data that constituted a "strategic road map" for the campaign's voter turnout models and strategies.
The Sanders campaign said the breach of the confidential files, which contain information such as past voting and donation history, was an isolated incident and fired a staffer involved. It blamed the breach on the DNC's software vendor, Washington-based NGP VAN, for dropping the firewall between the various Democratic candidates' data.
The DNC rents access to its master voter list to campaigns, which augment the data with their own information. The firewalls are supposed to block campaigns from spying on their rivals.
An audit released by the Clinton campaign showed the breach was more extensive than the Sanders campaign described, with at least 24 occasions when the Sanders campaign "saved" lists of Clinton data, from four different users.
Sanders, Clinton and a third candidate, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, will debate at St Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Saturday night.
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