Email exposes Bloomberg for misleading readers about reporter's hit job on Trump Department of Labor appointee

One of the most shameful and egregious media failures of the year has just gotten even worse for Bloomberg Law with the exposure of a new email showing that its reporter, along with the organization, dramatically misrepresented communications with the Department of Labor as part of a hit job that temporarily led to a Trump appointee's resignation.

Far from an innocent inquiry that reporter Ben Penn presented it as, an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows he asked the department accusatory questions that were clearly an effort to get appointee Leif Olson fired by falsely smearing him as an anti-Semite. Penn, misrepresenting old Facebook posts, asked whether the department found Olson "fit for government service" and whether they were OK with senior employees who made "comments that were disparaging to Jews."

Last month, Bloomberg Law's Penn proudly tweeted out a "scoop" that Olson, who had recently started as an adviser in the department's Wage and Hour Division, had been forced to resign after the surfacing of Facebook posts that were described as anti-Semitic.

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