Cameron Joseph contributed reporting.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign has hired the research staffer who in 2016 was tasked by the Clinton campaign with compiling opposition research on the senator, New York Magazine reported Wednesday.
Per New York, Tyson Brody (pictured above, right) served as Clinton’s deputy research director and compiled information on both the candidate herself and Sanders. The magazine said Brody was the first Clinton staffer to work on Sanders’ 2020 campaign.
Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir confirmed the news with New York but added that the campaign would not “engage in mudslinging or character assassination.”
“That said,” he continued, “one of the reasons we hired Tyson is to prepare this campaign for whatever false accusations and allegations are leveled against us.”
“Most importantly, Tyson’s work on this campaign will help us educate voters about the issues, policies and stances that the Senator has taken over the course of a lifetime fighting for working people.”
One of Brody’s coworkers on the Clinton campaign told TPM of the hire: “It’s a really smart move by the Sanders campaign. Tyson literally wrote the book on Bernie’s oppo.”
Emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and subsequently published by Wikileaks show Brody’s role in the Clinton campaign’s research on Sanders.
Brody also appeared in a nearly four-hour Facebook Live video the Clinton campaign posted, in which he and other research staffers read all of the lawsuits involving then-candidate Donald Trump.
