“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said about the confidential information.
Holy crap. If that theory is correct, the "anonymous tip" was to give the newspaper a reason to pull up everything they could find on Newell, and then make this digging look like identity theft. They may have even committed actual identity theft as part of this plan, hoping to pin the crime on the journalists at the paper. If Newell is not playing a role in this, they could have been trying to destroy two careers with one stone and winded up pitting these parties against each other.