Democratic debate starts with fireworks as Bernie Sanders apologizes to Hillary Clinton over data breach

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) apologized to former Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton after his campaign was found to haveimproperly gained access to sensitive voter data gathered by the Clinton campaign.

Asked about the data breach right off the bat at the third Democratic debate on Saturday, Sanders offered an apology to Clinton and explained his view of what happened.   

"I apologize," Sanders said to Clinton. "I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the kind of campaign I want to run."

Clinton thanked Sanders for his apology. She said that although she was concerned about the data breach, she said she "didn't think that American people care" about the issue.  

"I very much appreciate that comment Bernie, it really is important that we go forward on this," Clinton. 

"We should move on…because I don’t think the American people care about this."

Before apologizing to Clinton, Sanders criticized the Democratic National Committee's data-management vendor for accidentally taking down the firewall that allowed Sanders to access the voter information. He said that he was cooperating with several investigations into the data breach. 

"In this case, our staff did the wrong thing. As soon as we learned that they looked at that information, we fired that person," Sanders said.

Sanders also dinged the Democratic National Committee for their decision to revoke Sanders' access to DNC data as punishment for the breach, which the DNC backed down from early Saturday morning.. 

"What the DNC did — arbitrarily without discussing it with us — is shut off our access to our own information, crippling our campaign," he said. "That was an egregious act. I'm glad that this was resolved."

businessinsider