Reports abound on Social Media and internet blogs:
JUST IN: Bernie Sanders Vindicated In DNC Firewall Allegations, Drops Lawsuit Against Them“ from BiPartisanReport.com
Bernie Sanders Vindicated In DNC Firewall Allegations, Drops Lawsuit: PostedToday.com
Headlines like these erupted into all sort of posts against Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, the DNC and even Hillary Clinton. So, is it true?
Depends on how you phrase it. Bernie Sanders was never indicated in any claim of “stealing” data from the DNC. However that does not mean his “campaign” was not found to have been involved in data mining and unauthorized access to private information. The DNC did stop Sanders’ campaign from accessing data for 24 hours or so while they investigated what happened. That is when allegations of “cheating” and “bias” began against everyone BUT Bernie.
Let’s be clear before #BernieorBust thinks I am attacking him or StormisComing starts posting that I am a Hillary drenched commie-neo-liberal hack. When the data breaches came to light Bernie immediately fired 4 staffers who were believed to have committed the hacking. (Yes, hacking, Claiming it was a ‘vulnerable firewall” means they went looking for it and breaching it once they found it is hacking). Bernie, to his credit, did not tolerate, even for a minute, the actions of the 4 individuals that allegedly improperly accessed confidential information belonging solely to Hillary Clinton. What Bernie got upset at was that the DNC cut off his access to the database for 24 hours while they investigated the breach.
Bernie filed a lawsuit against the DNC claiming his campaign was innocent of the allegations and claiming breach of contract by depriving him of access to the database while investigating the unauthorized access.
Let us start from there. Here is how a lawsuit works. (Simplified VERSION just to make the article interesting. However, it pretty well sums up all the important parts without getting into legal details, specifics, and arguing over the meaning of the word “if”. This is just a diary after all).
Scenario: Say someone (say BOB) accuses you of something that is false. Say you also have a contract with BOB for access to certain information, and BOB won't give you access to that information because of what BOB accused you of in the first place. What do you do?
In politics, the first thing you do is have your campaign manager accuse BOB of being dishonest. Then you tell the media your story and claim BOB is actually helping another candidate by cheating and BOB’s establishment is against you. After the political part is done, you file a lawsuit. You sue BOB because you claim your good name has been damaged and you want to prove your innocence. (This is not a criminal case where you are innocent until proven guilty, that is another diary for another day.) You tell the judge that you were damaged, and ask the judge to punish BOB (usually for money) You also tell the judge that BOB breached (didn’t follow) your contract because BOB wouldn’t give you information you were entitled to, and that damaged you too. You don’t tell the judge about the political part because that makes the judge unhappy.
Now BOB will come back and tells the judge that BOB did not lie about you, that everything BOB accused you of is true and BOB can prove it. BOB also tells the judge that if you, or someone that worked for you, did all those things, you breached (didn’t follow) the contract and it was BOB, not you, that was damaged.Then, in politics, BOB shows the media that you fired 4 people from your business for doing exactly what BOB said those people did at the time BOB said those people did it. BOB then goes on the late-night talk show tour to claim BOB was right and no one was cheating you. (Notice BOB went to the judge first and did politics second. Judges get very unhappy if you put politics in before them when he/she wants Answers. Trust me when I say the judge does not care about the politics even a little bit).
You and BOB agree to an investigation by someone everyone can agree about and you wait to find out what the investigator says. Now let’s replace BOB with the DNC and you with Bernie and cheating “other candidate” with Hillary (she hasn’t been falsely accused of anything in a while and we don’t want her to feel left out).
Fast Forward: The investigation is complete. It turns out DNC was right. It turns out 4 people, (probably the same 4 people Bernie fired) did use 4 unauthorized user accounts from Bernie’s 2016 campaign during a 1-hour period and those 4 people conducted 25 searches, saved those searches somewhere, and downloaded information that did not belong to Bernie. The information belonged to Hillary, and there is no evidence that anyone else did anything like that even though Bernie’s campaign (not Bernie) called them cheaters. Now what?
Politically, Bernie’s campaign puts out statements that Bernie and his people never did anything wrong but he is going to ‘voluntarily drop” his lawsuit, (because Bernie is a great guy who does not like all this ugliness) and “voluntarily withdraw” his breach of contract claim.
Here is an example of a press release to help you:
“In its statement on Friday announcing the withdrawal, Sanders’ campaign also strongly maintained that it never deliberately stole information. The Sanders campaign never ‘stole’ any voter file data; the Sanders campaign never ‘exported’ any unauthorized voter file data; and the Sanders campaign certainly never had access to the Clinton campaign’s ‘strategic road map..." (As reported in Politico on April 30, 2016 and by Eugene Scott, CNN Politics, Washington, April 29, 2016).
Sounds pretty impressive. But there are a few problems. Why, if Bernie was innocent, and the DNC falsely accused him and damaged his good name is he “voluntarily dropping” his lawsuit? Why, if no one accessed Hillary’s information, and no one downloaded or copied anything, is he “voluntarily dropping” his breach of contract action? Do the 4 people he fired now have a claim for wrongful termination? Can they sue Bernie for damaging their good name and reputation? What about real news sources and political blogs that don’t agree. Some of them are so pesky with details.
Pesky Source I:
"The independent investigation by CrowdStrike,” agreed upon by the Sanders campaign and the DNC, “identified evidence of unauthorized access via four user accounts from the Bernie 2016 campaign. All unauthorized access occurred during a one-hour period from 10:41 to 11:42 EST on December 16, 2015.”
CNN put it this way.
A DNC investigation, the results of which were also released Friday, concluded that the wrongdoing did not go beyond the four Sanders staffers who accessed the database and were fired soon after the incident came to light.
The Sanders team ran multiple searches in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and about 10 March states, including Florida and Colorado, after it noticed the error. One of the data sets it accessed was a Clinton spreadsheet that ranked voters' enthusiasm -- a potential opportunity for Sanders' campaign to target voters who were hesitant to support the former secretary of state. (Eugene Scott, CNN Politics, Washington, April 29, 2016).
Wait!
Are all of these sources saying the Sanders’ campaign did improperly access Hillary’s computer information? That the Sanders’ campaign did access 25 of Hillary’s files involving 11 states? That the Sanders’ campaign did download polling data about Hillary’s alleged “enthusiasm gap that they have been hawking since January?” Thank goodness it was only 4 “staffers” in the Sanders’ campaign that he immediately fired. Bernie did the right thing the moment he heard about it and he did it decisively when it happened. Thank goodness that data wasn’t “stolen”. I do wonder if “download” and “exported” means the same for LA TImes, CNN, Politico and The Hill as it does to the Sanders’ campaign. What now? Not to worry.
Solution:
Social Media. The place where truth is pliable, facts are for sissies and “we can circulate anything we want” holds high court with an informed electorate. (I am not being sarcastic, we are all informed by something). Surprisingly, neither FOX nor MSNBC touched this story with a 10-foot pole so far. They are with the judge on this one. They don’t have to decide so they are not getting into it unless they have no choice.
Bottom line: No one "vindicated" Bernie because "Bernie was never accused of anything. No one thought for a second that he would stoop so low as to steal from friends or play dirty with people he repeatedly claims he admires. Bernie’s campaign staff were accused and ......wait for it....the independent investigation agreed to by Bernie showed ....wait for it....the allegations were true.
No one ever came out from anywhere and said Bernie’s campaign “stole” information. The allegations have always been that Bernie’s campaign unlawfully and without permission accessed private information from the records of a competitor. When asked to attack Bernie on the issue during a debate right after it happened, Hilary Had “no comment” and stated “the party is handling it.” Even now, when it turns out that 25 of Hillary’s files and polling data from 11 states were accessed. Even now, when we learn data on one of Bernie’s favorite talking points was improperly accessed by Bernie staffers, Hillary, as of Friday, has “no comment” against Bernie. She has not gone negative about Bernie during this process. (To be fair, she did get a little testy about the Daily News article and Bernie calling her ‘unqualified” but that is another diary for another day).
Bernie and Hillary are not enemies. Hillary and Bernie will be friends even if their supporters are having difficulty with the friendship. Bernie wants to be part of the DNC so they don’t hate each other either. Bernie and the DNC will be friends even when Bernie’s people call the nice lady who runs the DNC nasty names.
The facts are simple. The situation is over and Bernie handled the 4 alleged perpetrators exactly as anyone would expect him to respond. Once he found out the allegations were true, he dropped his lawsuits and moved on. Nothing to see here. Move on.
So now, let the nastiness be over. Let us be accurate about how it ended. Most importantly let us all get back to the business of taking back the House, the Senate, and keeping the White House Blue.
