Bernie Sanders Did A Bad, Will Have To Sue His Way To The White House Now

Someone has some splainin' to do

Uh oh and oh no and tsk-tsk. It seems the Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign For Socialist Czar of America was all up inside Hillary Clinton's home-brewed voter database over at the Democratic National Committee, stealing her carefully curated and very private Cats4Hillz information. Wait, what?! He would never do such a thing! But apparently his staffers would:

Sanders staffers exploited a temporary glitch in the DNC's voter database to save lists created by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to an audit of the breach obtained by Bloomberg.

The Democratic National Committee noticed the Sanders campaign ogling at Clinton's voter drawers this week and promptly ban-hammered him from using the database at all, even to access his own campaign info. Which makes it a little bit hard for his team to call you at home during your dinner and ask if you are still Feeling The Bern. And the Sanders campaign is NOT VERY HAPPY ABOUT THAT!

In response, Sanders' team was banned from accessing all of the DNC's data as well as its own data, a move that is "taking our campaign hostage," campaign manager Jeff Weaver said at a press conference outside Sanders's Capitol Hill campaign office.

The Sanders campaign says that of course it never cheated and sneaked a peek at Clinton's super secret sauce, just because the firewall happened to not be working and gosh, that glorious Clinton data was sitting right there, just begging to be stoled. But, um, well:

The Sanders team's explanation of the incident has gradually changed since it was first confirmed late Thursday, initially saying that only a single “low-level” staffer accessed the Clinton data and that none of it was saved.

But the database logs created by NGP VAN show that four accounts associated with the Sanders team took advantage of the Wednesday morning breach. Staffers conducted searches that would be especially advantageous to the campaign, including lists of its likeliest supporters in 10 early voting states, including Iowa and New Hampshire.

But it's not as if Team Sanders was going to use any of that information! Nope, they were simply trying to help the DNC find the real killer, er, uh, glitch in the security system. And if the DNC does not immediately restore the Sanders campaign's access to the database of Democrats throughout U.S. America, Bernie Sanders will SEE YOU IN COURT! 

Bernie Sanders' campaign on Friday threatened to take the Democratic National Committee to federal court if the party organization doesn't restore the campaign's access to a crucial voter database.

DNC Chairlady Debbie Wasserman Schultz sees it a tad differently, though:

She said "multiple staffers" from the Sanders campaign downloaded information that they did not have the right to collect.

"They not only viewed it, but they exported it and they downloaded it," Wasserman Schultz told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "We don't know the depth of what they actually viewed and downloaded. We have to make sure that they did not manipulate the information."

She added, "That is just like if you walked into someone's home when the door was unlocked and took things that don't belong to you in order to use them for your own benefit. That's inappropriate. Unacceptable."

Is that wrong? That seems kind of wrong. But the Sanders campaign has only admitted that mistakes were made by this one guy who's already been good and fired, Josh Uretsky (sucks to be you, Josh), so it's time to let bygones be bygones and let Bernie Sanders have his access back, OR ELSE.

Far be it from us to ever criticize the strategies of the Sanders campaign, but stealing Clinton's voter information because it was just so easy to do, and then acting like it was for some greater good because come ON, it's Bernie Sanders, after all -- while still firing a guy for doing a naughty thing the Sanders campaign at the same time maintains was not really naughty, but kind of was, but for the greater good -- seems, shall we say, problematic .

While we tend to err on the side of assuming that Wasserman Schultz is generally the worst, for a Democrat, we also doubt she or anyone else at the DNC held a gun to Bernie Sanders staffers' heads and force them to download all that sweet sweet Clinton stuff. Just a guess.

The final Democratic primary debate of 2015, which everyone was planning to forget to DVR on Saturday night because borrrrrrring, might not be so boring after all. Wouldn't it be so rain-on-your-wedding-day ironic if it turns out that Sanders, not Clinton, crashed and burned because of naughty emaily things?

This soap opera is still developing, but it's looking unlikely that Bernie Sanders will be able to free college his way out of this one. Sad burned face.

[ Bloomberg / CNN ]