Clinton Goes For The Jugular After Data Breach
The front-runner prepped for a policy discussion, but after the data breach, she’s ready for a different kind of debate.
By Annie Karni
12/18/15 09:31 PM EST
In a shift of strategy hours before the third Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton’s campaign went for Bernie Sanders’ jugular, accusing his team of stealing valuable campaign data, misrepresenting what happened and inflicting “damage here that cannot be undone.”
The offensive came after the Sanders camp admitted its staffers reviewed, searched and saved data from Clinton’s voter file made accessible briefly Wednesday because of a data breach -- and it represented a complete shift of tone in the Democratic race where the hits have remained impersonal and focused on the issues.
“This was not an inadvertent glimpse into our data,” campaign manager Robby Mook charged on a conference call with reporters Friday night. “The staffers did not make a mistake -- they made 25 intentional searches of our data.” He said the breach struck at the heart of the campaign’s data “that took millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours to build. The voter file...is the fundamental basis of our strategy.”
And Clinton’s team was angry that Sanders tried to fundraise off the incident by acting like he was a victim of the Democratic National Committee. “Stop politicizing and work to ensure that what took place is remedied,” Mook said, even dropping that Sanders campaign may have broken the law.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon followed with more personal attacks, accusing Sanders’ team of undertaking a “deliberate effort to muddy the waters as to what is going on here” and said their top campaign officials were leaving “wiggle room in their answers” as to whether they have retained any data that was accessed during the 40-minute breach.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/clintons-offense-will-be-personal-216962#ixzz3un2cr02t
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