We should not be surprised Dylan Byers is defending Media Matters over at the Politico. I’m sure he does not want the spotlight shifting to him and the Politico for continually running Media Matters generated hit jobs.

Byers himself cited Media Maters bashing Dana Loesch.

He repurposed a Media Matters hit job on George Will recently too.

He makes sure we all see both Greg Sargent and Media Matters targeting the New York Times.

But here’s the one I’m most fascinated by and highlights the exact pattern described by Tucker Carlson. On January 31, 2012, at 6:20 p.m.,Dylan Byers linked to a Buzz Feed story about me that had been posted at 4:10 p.m. The Buzz Feed story itself was nothing more than a straight regurgitation of a Media Matters hit job posted at 1:52 p.m. In fact, the Buzz Feed story was the first link to Media Matters and the Politico was the second according to my Google News Alert that day. You will be unsurprised to learn the Huffington Post was third.

Tucker Carlson described Media Matters’ operation pattern and that story about me, in addition to the others, fit perfectly. Carlson noted:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.

Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment.

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

It is humorous to read Byers demanding examples from Carlson when he should be able to just pull up his own blog at Politico to find them. But the most laughable line of Dylan Byers’ denial/non-denial is this line:

In publishing those quotes without providing evidence, the Daily Caller has put accusations on the public record regardless of whether or not they carry any weight.

This is the Politico. Surely they have heard of Herman Cain.