Sanders dead enders are calling for the FBI to “save the Democratic party” by pressing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, even though she committed no crime. But it turns out the one Democratic campaign that may have violated federal law is the Sanders campaign. According to Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News, the independent investigation into the breach of the DNC’s data revealed that the Sanders campaign, and only the Sanders campaign, accessed unauthorized data. Contrary to their early protestations, the Sanders campaign actually exported this data.
In hindsight, the kind of victim blaming and excuse making that would be a hallmark of the Sanders campaign and its surrogates who blamed everything in sight except for their candidate and his policies for their losses (“low information voters,” “minority ‘brand loyalty’,” “confederate states,” “voter fraud,” “voter suppression,” etc. etc. ad nauseam), the Sanders campaign actually sued the DNC for… letting it get its data breached for cutting off access to the Sanders campaign even though the latter had clearly committed unauthorized uses.
Today that frivolous lawsuit was dropped.
Illegally accessing a computer system over state lines violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 USC § 1030 et seq., a federal crime.
It’s easy to see an alternate timeline where Sanders eeked out a win in Iowa and the momentum from that made him the nominee only to have principals of his campaign wrapped up in an FBI investigation over their data theft. Oh, the irony.
This all could have amounted to nothing, except that Sanders himself denied any wrongdoing and must clearly have at least tacitly OKed the lawsuit against the DNC. And, when running for the presidency, you are clearly seeking an office where “the buck stops.” Yet all we here are Orwellian press releases from the Sanders campaign claiming this vindicates what they said—huh?
I can’t even imagine the shitstorm that would have ensued if even a volunteer Hillary staffer had done this, let alone a national data director. She already receives the most negative coverage, moreso even than Trump. She has been at the center of right-wing attacks for 25 and left-wing attacks for 10, yet all of it comes to nothing.
Shame on the Sanders campaign.