DNC Will Not Remove Dannel Malloy, Barney Frank from Convention Roles at Request of Sanders

The Democratic National Committee will not remove the co-chairs of two of the Democratic National Convention's committees after the Bernie Sanders campaign requested their removal.

In a letter to the DNC on Friday, an attorney for the Sanders campaign asked the committee to disqualify former Congressman Barney Frank (Mass.), co-chair of the convention's rules committee, and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, co-chair of the convention's platform committee.

The letter described both Malloy and Frank as, "aggressive attack surrogates for the Clinton campaign."

"Their criticism of Sen. Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the senator and his campaign," Brad Deutsch, counsel for the Sanders campaign, wrote in the letter to the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee.

The letter states how Frank wrote an opinion piece expressing his "resentment" towards Sanders after the Vermont Senator won the New Hampshire primary. It also references how Frank referred to Sanders as, "outrageously McCarthyite," in a March interview.

Referring to Malloy, the letter calls him a Clinton "loyalist," who has "unfairly ascribed blame for national gun control laws single-handedly to Senator Sanders."

"The Chairs therefore cannot be relied upon to perform their Convention duties fairly and capably while laboring under such deeply held bias. The appointment of two individuals so outspokenly critical of Senator Sanders, and so closely affiliated with Secretary Clinton's campaign, raises concerns that two of the three Convention Standing Committees are being constituted in an overtly partisan way designed to exclude meaningful input from supporters of Senator Sanders' candidacy," the letter states.

The DNC issued a response on Saturday, saying no party rules were violated when Frank and Malloy were elected as co-chairs in January, meaning there was no reason to strip them of their titles, the Wall Street Journal reported. The DNC, in its response, did not mention the criticisms Malloy or Frank had made, according to the Washington Post.

Sanders faces a tough path to the nomination against frontrunner Hillary Clinton. According to the latest AP delegate count, Clinton leads Sanders by 270 delegates. Her lead widens when counting the so-called superdelegates to 768. A total of 2,383 delegates are needed to clinch the nomination.

The Democratic National Convention will take place in Philadelphia July 25-28.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Creative Commons