Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has angrily accused the Democratic Party of "taking our campaign hostage" after it was temporarily barred from accessing a trove of information about potential voters as punishment for improperly accessing data compiled by the campaign of rival Hillary Clinton.
The incident interrupted a period in which Democrats were sailing toward a peaceful primary season, with Clinton comfortably ahead of Sanders nationally in a campaign that harbors little of the discord and discontent roiling the Republican Party.
The reaction of the Democratic National Committee to the data breach, the depth of which was debated by all involved, thrust into the open long-standing suspicions among Sanders and his supporters that the national party is unfairly working to support the candidacy of its front-runner.
"Clearly, in this case, they are trying to help the Clinton campaign," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver.
The campaign later filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to regain access to a DNC voter database.
The lawsuit says the campaign is now "sustaining irreparable injury and financial losses."
Weaver said earlier Friday the DNC was "taking our campaign hostage" by preventing it from accessing the data.
DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz responded that "the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data," rejecting Weaver's effort to portray the breach as the fault of a software glitch and a small group of rogue staffers.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign was "informed that our proprietary data was breached by Sanders campaign staff in 25 searches by four different accounts and that this data was saved into the Sanders' campaign account."
"We are asking that the Sanders campaign and the DNC work expeditiously to ensure that our data is not in the Sanders campaign's account and that the Sanders campaign only have access to their own data," he added.
The back-and-forth on the eve of the party's final presidential debate of the year underscored Sanders' attempt to cast himself as an anti-establishment upstart willing to take on Clinton, the unquestioned front-runner for the party's nomination who is not beloved among some of the party's most liberal voters.
