Democratic National Committee Chair [crscore]Debbie Wasserman Schultz[/crscore] claimed the party would suspend access to voter information if the Clinton campaign improperly accessed the Sanders campaign’s proprietary voter information.

Appearing on “MSNBC Live with Tamron Hall” on Friday, Wasserman Schultz defended against criticism from Sanders supporters who claim the DNC was rigging the election in favor of Clinton because “you already have a candidate.” (RELATED: DNC Is Protecting Hillary With Weekend Debates, O’Malley, Sanders Complain)

By midday Friday, a petition on Moveon.org was created demanding “DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz immediately reinstate the Bernie Sanders campaign’s access to the DNC’s 50-state voter file, which is crucial for voter outreach in the last weeks before the first Democratic caucuses. Shutting down Sanders’ tools to reach voters is an infringement on democracy.” At time of publication, well over 90,000 people signed the petition. (RELATED: Sanders Staffer Fired After Improperly Accessing Clinton Voter Data [VIDEO])

In response to the petition, Wasserman Schultz’s claimed, “I would ask any Sanders supporters or anyone who is, you know, formulating an opinion about the actions that we’ve taken, to put the shoe on the other foot.”

“If it were the Clinton campaign that accessed the proprietary information of the Sanders campaign,” Wasserman Schultz argued. “You can be darned sure understandably that his supporters would expect that we would take the exact same action that we are taking.”

The DNC chair explained her actions were “based on our memorandum of understanding, our agreement with each campaign, to ensure that the integrity of their information, their proprietary information was not only preserved but restored. We’re talking about a violation that the Sanders campaign has admitted.”

Hall pushed back, “But is there no other alternative, with seven weeks to go, with the debate tomorrow, is there no other punishment available?”

“If you have a campaign that has inappropriately accessed the proprietary information of another campaign and the voter file itself is what you use to manipulate that information,” Wasserman Schultz said, “At this point, I am exploring what options are available to us, but until I am fully advised by independent experts how best to approach this, as quickly as possible, the only available remedy for us is to make sure that we cannot have the information manipulated and the only way to do that is to temporarily suspend access to the voter file.”

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