I'm not an expert on federal campaign law, only state level, but it's possible this could also be considered a large in-kind campaign donation by the DNC. Certa

I'm not an expert on federal campaign law, only state level, but it's possible this could also be considered a large in-kind campaign donation by the DNC. Certainly, there are real dollar prices associated with access to NGP VAN's databases and it seems very unlikely that the Sanders campaign got in for free. I can't speak to the legalities of it, but a court could certainly treat this as the DNC providing monetary aid to the Clinton campaign or even denying pre-paid services to the Sanders campaign without just compensation. When we were given discounts on campaign databases, our financial paperwork was required to reflect them as donations.