The anonymous tip came in at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 6. There it sat for almost 24 hours, until Rob Shimshock, a 22-year-old reporter for the Daily Caller in Washington, found it in the site’s generic inbox, an electronic slush pile. The unsigned email contained links to a few tweets, as well as to the biographical page of an untenured history lecturer at California State University, Fresno—Lars Maischak.The author was obscure, but the tweets were explosive.