If the companies report was being delivered to these two, it's very likely they were the first to find out about his account. CNN first reported on the posts in October of last year. They claimed they were deleted ahead of his campaign launch in August of that year. Obviously, they didn't account for the number of archive sites for Reddit accounts that existed. And, I want to remind the readers that he never said the account wasn't his:

“That was very much me f**king around the internet,” he told CNN. “I don’t want people to see me for who I was in my worst Internet comment – or even frankly who I was in my best Internet comment … I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today, really.”

A full archive of his posts (or 2014 comments from his account) can found here: https://maine-monitor-102025.biglocalnews.org/

They had to have been the first to know, and then CNN found the account somehow. Here is the earliest thread I could find on Reddit that explicitly mentions his username, https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/comments/1o8m653/cnn_exposed_graham_platners_reddit_account_and_it/. The lowest ranking comments read as follows:

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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