BERNIE WINS: Will regain access to key data after brawl with national Democratic party

The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) earned a late victory Friday night as it was announced his campaign would regain access to voter information Saturday morning.

In a statement, the Sanders campaign said the Democratic National Committee "capitulated" in the face of a lawsuit the campaign had filed hours earlier.

“We are extremely pleased that the DNC has reversed its outrageous decision to take Sen. Sanders’ data. The information we provided tonight is essentially the same information we already sent them by email on Thursday,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager, in a statement.

The about-face came after Sanders' campaign took the virtually unprecedented step of filing a lawsuit against the DNCfor cutting off its access to the voter file — based on accusations his campaign improperly accessed data compiled by the campaign of rival Hillary Clinton.

Sanders' campaign subsequently accused the party of trying to "undermine" him in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, a race in which Sanders is most closely positioned to challenge Clinton, the clear front-runner.

"By their action, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable," Weaver said in an earlier, hastily scheduled press conference.

"Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want. But they are not going to sabotage our campaign, one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history. We are announcing today that if the DNC continues to hold our data hostage and continues to try to attack the heart and soul of our grassroots campaign, we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking immediate relief."

The Sanders campaign said access to the database should be restored by early Saturday morning. It claimed that more than 500,000 people signed online petitions in support of the Sanders campaign Friday.

In a statement early Saturday morning, DNC Chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) said: "The Sanders campaign has now complied with the DNC’s request to provide the information that we have requested of them. Based on this information, we are restoring the Sanders campaign’s access to the voter file, but will continue to investigate to ensure that the data that was inappropriately accessed has been deleted and is no longer in possession of the Sanders campaign."

"The Sanders campaign has agreed to fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach," she continued. "The fact that data was accessed inappropriately is completely unacceptable, and the DNC expects each campaign to operate with integrity going forward with respect to the voter file."

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