Matthew Mosk
Mosk got his hands on the messages between Steffen and a Free Republic poster still only known as MD4Bush without, according to Mosk, knowing who MD4Bush is.
“Reporter Matthew Mosk did view the chat room postings between Joe Steffen (NCPAC) and MD4Bush on freerepublic.com a couple of months after the postings had occurred using sign-on information given to him by someone acting on MD4Bush’s behalf.”
In other words, Mosk had to know that MD4Bush was some kind of political operative — at best, someone with a grudge against Steffen and at worst, a foot soldier for the state Democratic party. Yet Mosk chose to conceal that from his readers.
Mosk didn't address the issue of how the O'Malley campaign knew in advance about the Washington Post report.