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Email Shows Bloomberg Law Reporter Mischaracterized Labor Department Aide’s Facebook Posts, Lawyer Says

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A Bloomberg Law reporter who went after a government aide in September by characterizing old Facebook posts as anti-Semitic mischaracterized the employee’s comments in an email to the Department of Labor, a lawyer said.

Ben Penn, a Bloomberg Law reporter, wrote a Sept. 3 article about DOL political appointee Leif Olson, 43. Penn brought up 2016 posts on Olson’s Facebook page and said a remark “references two anti-Semitic tropes,” in an Aug. 30 inquiry to DOL.

The inquiry email indicated Penn “truncated & mischaracterized the Facebook posts,” tweeted Ted Frank, a lawyer and director of Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. Frank obtained Penn’s email to DOL through the Freedom of Information Act, he tweeted Thursday evening.

???? ???? ????@blaw refused to answer my questions about their abusive journalism fail on the Leif Olson story, so we FOIA’ed Penn’s emails to DOL to see how it happened. As you can see, this was a total hit job, @benjaminPenn truncated & mischaracterized the Facebook posts. pic.twitter.com/CzTsMKWUBN

— tedfrank (@tedfrank) October 3, 2019

The email indicated Penn’s article “was a total hit job,” Frank wrote.

DOL accepted Olson’s resignation on Aug. 30, 18 days after hiring him, after Bloomberg Law’s inquiry. The department reinstated him on Sept. 4 following backlash over Bloomberg Law’s report.

Penn’s email included screenshots of the Facebook comments but cropped out a portion of the full thread, which showed a comment labeling the note as sarcasm.

Bloomberg Law cropped out the portion of the thread that asserted Olson’s comments were a joke. (Screenshot Facebook)

“I’m trying to figure out the correct response to epic sarcasm. … [Y]ou speak sarcasm like it is your first language,” a Facebook user wrote in a comment on Olson’s post.

Bloomberg Law received backlash from numerous political commentators on social media after publishing Penn’s article.

The remark “was sarcastic criticism of the alt-right’s conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic positions,” Olson said in an interview according to Bloomberg Law.

Penn emailed DOL nine questions about Olson’s “personal social media posts,” a screenshot on Twitter of the email shows.

Penn also reached out to Frank for his article.

“Penn shaded his story by asking innocuous questions from Olson’s friends while allowing opponents to smear his litigation work,” Frank tweeted in September with a screenshot of their email exchange.

“Penn didn’t ask me about anti-Semitism or about our Target case — though he got a quote from the counsel in Target reversed by Olson’s appeal in the Eighth. Penn just asked me about labor law,” he added in another tweet.

Penn tweeted back at Frank in September alleging “all I had to do was present DOL with a screenshot of the post and request for comment, and 4 hours later I’m told he [Olson] has resigned.”

Bloomberg Law did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.