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 By early Saturday morning, however, after discussions with the DNC and a federal judge late Friday, the Sanders campaign said that the DNC had "capitulated" and agreed to restore access to the data. In a statement issued nearly at the same time, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz 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," Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. Notably, the email made no mention of the campaign's decision to fire a staffer involved in the breach and Weaver's admission that the staffer's actions were "unacceptable." "I believe that I took appropriate steps to audit and assess the security breach and that nothing I did was done in a way that it would give the Sanders campaign a competitive advantage," Uretsky said in an email to The Associated Press.  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic race for president unexpectedly exploded with rancor Friday as Hillary Clinton's campaign accused rival Bernie Sanders of stealing millions of dollars worth of information about potential voters. Even before the lawsuit was filed, Sanders' campaign sent a fundraising email to supporters that said his "quick rise in the national polls (has) caused the Democratic National Committee to place its thumb on the scales in support of Hillary Clinton's campaign." Mook characterized the data that was taken as the "fundamental keys of our campaign" and the "strategic road map." "Clearly, in this case, they are trying to help the Clinton campaign," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said of the Democratic National Committee. Weaver says the Democratic National Committee... (Associated Press) 
 
 Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver, speaks during a news conference at the Bernie 2016 Campaign Office in Washington, Friday, Dec. 18, 2015. The controversy centers around the Friday morning revelation that Sanders staffer Josh Uretsky — along with other, more junior aides — took advantage of a software error this week by political technology company NGP VAN that allowed them to access the voter file that contains vital information used by campaigns to identify and monitor voters and potential supporters. Josh Uretsky, the data director fired by Sanders' campaign, said his team was merely investigating the security problem and trying to figure out how exposed the software patch left their own data. The DNC's decision to block his access to the voter files, however, was a potentially campaign-threatening blow, as it cut off his political effort's connection to critical targeting information. The lists are obtained through the time-consuming process of phone banking and, based on those conversations, scoring voters based on how likely or unlikely they are to support Clinton. Fallon also added in a statement on Friday afternoon, “We were 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. Josh Gerstein, Kyle Cheney, Nick Gass and Eliza Collins contributed to this report.
– The Democratic National Committee has agreed to restore access to voter files for the Bernie Sanders campaign, cooling tensions in what Politico calls a "civil war" within the party over the Sanders campaign's improper accessing of Clinton campaign data. The DNC agreed to restore access soon after the Sanders campaign made good on its threat to file a lawsuit but the two sides described the development in very different ways, reports the Washington Post. The Sanders campaign said the DNC had "capitulated" and "reversed its outrageous decision," while the DNC's statement said it had decided to restore access because the Sanders campaign had agreed to "fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach." The issue has caused angry words to be exchanged ahead of Saturday night's debate, the AP reports. The Clinton campaign seemed especially annoyed by a Sanders fundraising email accusing the DNC of "tipping the scales" for Clinton. "They stole data as a reason to raise money for their campaign," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said, per Politico. He said the breach was far more than the "inadvertent glimpse into our data" the Sanders campaign has described. "It's outrageous to suggest that our campaign 'stole' any data," countered Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs. "What is true is the data we collected and need to run a winning campaign is now being stolen from us by a DNC dominated by Clinton people."