The Labor Department has reinstated the official who resigned this week after a Bloomberg Law reporter falsely accused him of publishing “anti-Semitic” Facebook posts.
Amazingly, Bloomberg Law is standing by journalist Ben Penn’s wholly erroneous and only slightly amended report, even after conservative attorney Leif Olson’s reinstatement. Moreover, Bloomberg Law staffers were reportedly instructed not to promote news of the rehiring. Also, the newsgroup’s follow-up reporting on Olson’s reinstatement includes a complete whitewash of its earlier attempt to murder his reputation.
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In other words, Bloomberg Law shot its credibility all to hell this week, and for nothing.
Acting Secretary Patrick Pizzella “personally made this decision” to re-hire Olson to the Wage and Hour Division “after carefully reviewing all the facts and circumstances,” a Labor Department spokesman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “He concluded that a correction is much better than an injustice.”
The Labor Department explained elsewhere in a statement, “On Friday, August 30, 2019, senior policy advisor of the Wage and Hour Division Leif Olson offered his resignation and the department accepted.”
The statement added, “Following a thorough reexamination of the available information and upon reflection, the department has concluded that Olson has satisfactorily explained the tone and content of his sarcastic social media post and will return to his position.”
On Tuesday, Bloomberg Law published a bogus report titled, “Trump Labor Aide Quits After Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts Surface.” The posts in question were not only clearly made in jest, but they were also specifically skewering actual anti-Semites. Olson was making fun of right-wing nutjob Paul Nehlen’s hilariously failed attempt to unseat Speaker Paul Ryan.
Olson wrote in 2016:
The guy just suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory. Let’s see him and his Georgetown cocktail-party puppetmasters try to walk that one off.
Anyone with even the good sense God gave goats can tell Olson was mocking Nehlen and all the anti-Semitic kookiness that accompanied his doomed congressional campaign. He then parried another social media user’s suggestion that Ryan was a “neo-con,” going even further in the same vein and stating facetiously that Ryan must be Jewish, as evidenced by the media’s failure to report that he is Jewish.
Bloomberg Law’s Benn Penn presumably has a brain, yet he chose anyway to accuse Olson of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes (his original headline accused Olson explicitly of writing “anti-Semitic Facebook posts”). Penn claimed the supposedly problematic social media messages were part of a larger trend of Trump administration officials failing to vet candidates properly. Penn also remarked on Twitter that, “Any cursory screening of his social media accounts could’ve uncovered the anti-Semitism.”
Conspicuously absent from Penn’s reporting and tweets are any mentions of the name “Paul Nehlen.” The fringe right-winger and his brand of bigotry, which Olson specifically satirized in 2016, are not mentioned even once in the Bloomberg Law report.
After basically everyone with an ounce of common sense noted that Penn had badly misrepresented the Facebook posts, and that includes left-leaning writers from outlets such as Vox and TPM, Bloomberg Law went into its shell and defended its story, relying on Olson’s sudden resignation as justification for the article’s continued existence.
“We stand behind our reporting,” the spokesperson said. “We contacted the White House and the Department of Labor asking for comment on Mr. Olson’s Facebook posts. Within four hours, the Department of Labor responded that Mr. Olson had resigned.”
But now the newsroom cannot even stand on that flimsy defense. Amazingly enough, Bloomberg Law is digging in and refuses to retract its original fake news story. It has only amended the headline slightly so that it now reads, “Trump Labor Aide Quits After Facebook Posts Surface.” The story also bears an editor’s note, which reads, “In light of the subsequent events, we removed ‘Anti-Semitic’ from the headline and clarified Olson’s reference to those tropes.”
Absurdly enough, a separate Sept. 4 Bloomberg Law report on Olson’s reinstatement claims he resigned from the Labor Department after Penn asked agency officials about “a Facebook conversation that referenced anti-Semitic tropes.” Ah, now Olson merely “referenced anti-Semitic tropes.” The goalposts have been moved so far back, I am not even sure we are playing the same sport anymore.
