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It's been 52 hours since @BLaw's attack on Leif Olson was posted, and Bloomberg's defense of the story is inexcusable. It remains a disingenuous hatchet job top to bottom. /1
@BLaw Of course the headline is a deliberate misreading of obvious sarcasm mocking loathsome Paul Nehlen supporters, as commentators pointed out within minutes of its posting. /2
Is @BLaw asleep at the wheel? Maybe. Let's walk through the article, which is wrong about much more than the headline. /4
@BLaw First up is the low resolution image from Facebook, which disingenuously cropped out comments confirming Olson's friends understood the sarcasm. (Note I am one of his Facebook friends, FWIW.) /5
@BLaw Then it describes his background: "Olson also was known in Houston-area legal circles for…" allegedly a bunch of right-wing causes. /6
@BLaw Actually, he was a private attorney who spent most his time on ordinary commercial cases. To the extent he was known more broadly, it would be due to his hobby defending folks against internet bullies. /7
@BLaw "...his appellate work challenging the rights of same-sex couples after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gay marriage is legal..." False! /8
@BLaw "...intervening to block defrauded consumers from receiving $10 million that Target Corp. had agreed to pay in a class settlement..."
Wildly disingenuous. He objected on behalf of class members like himself who got nothing from the settlement. /9
Wildly disingenuous. He objected on behalf of class members like himself who got nothing from the settlement. /9
@BLaw In fact, Target opposed his objection because they wanted to quickly resolve the case in exchange for a small fund, disproportionately going to plaintiffs attorneys. You can read about the case here (note that I helped represented him): hlli.org/target-corpora… /10
@BLaw Next: "…and urging the high court to invalidate the Obama administration’s policy giving certain illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship."
False again! Lieff had no role in the Supreme Court appeal, as @JoshMBlackman discusses. reason.com/2019/09/03/blo… /11
False again! Lieff had no role in the Supreme Court appeal, as @JoshMBlackman discusses. reason.com/2019/09/03/blo… /11
@BLaw @JoshMBlackman Note that I've spent the last 6 tweets parsing one sentence of this hit piece, and it's false in every clause. @benjaminpenn is not a reporter who cares about truth. /12
@BLaw @JoshMBlackman @benjaminpenn Next, we have the quote from ADL spokesman Jake Hyman saying the "post" is antisemetic. The @ADL walked that back 43 hours ago, but Bloomberg has kept the article up with only a slight edit. /13
@BLaw @JoshMBlackman @benjaminpenn @ADL @BLaw simply added a "(1)" to the title, and added a new paragraph directly contradicting the previous one, but otherwise still asserting flatly, falsely, that Olson made antisemetic remarks. /14
@BLaw @JoshMBlackman @benjaminpenn @ADL The singular word "post" is the original ADL quote is interesting, because sarcastic comment mistakenly condemned is in the comments. Perhaps ADL was sent misleading excerpt by @benjaminpenn? Worth inquiry as @tedfrank notes: /15 
The hit piece next repeats that "Olson built a solo practice in recent years focusing on core right-leaning legal issues." Yeah, no; he seems to have paid his bills (before moving to Washington D.C.) with mostly normal non-political litigation. /16
For example, in apparently his last Fifth Circuit argument before relocating his wife and kids to D.C., Olson was appointed as a CJA, representing a criminal defendant. ca5.uscourts.gov/OralArgRecordi… /17
He argued that his client was not mentally competent to stand trial, and the district court erred in crediting the government's expert over defendant's expert without explanation. Huh... that doesn't sound like a red meat right-wing ideological case. /18
December, Leif argued a commercial appeal opposite to @RMFifthCircuit. The case involved plaintiff that won $2.8 million damages from shipping company whose truck injured him. Corp appealed, arguing the award exceeded limits of Texas tort reforms. /19
@RMFifthCircuit Reading the hit piece you might assume Leif represented the corporation in defense of supposed Texas tort reform limits. Nope! Olson argued that the plaintiff should keep the damages the jury awarded him. ca5.uscourts.gov/OralArgRecordi… /20
Golly, Leif sure did a bad job building right-wing practice! Either that, or @benjaminpenn was lazy (possibly lying) in support of a simplistic partisan narrative. /21
@benjaminpenn Next: "When the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 held that same-sex couples have the right to marry nationwide…Olson alleged that the city should still be prohibited from paying benefits to the spouses of…employees in same-sex marriages." False. Olson was out of the case then. /22
@benjaminpenn @benjaminpenn then quotes the plaintiffs' attorneys in the Target case, "his efforts to thwart the payments were not lost on the consumers’ attorney." No kidding! They'd applied for $6.75 million in fees. Of course they noticed when Olson objected. /23
Vincent Esades, whose firm was paid over a million dollars from a settlement that gave 99.7% of class members $0 impugns Olson's motives: "…two years for somebody who didn’t suffer any damages and couldn’t articulate what he would’ve wanted from the settlement." /24
But entire point of the objection, available online, is that anyone harmed by the Target breach one minute after the claims deadline could never get anything from Target. The settlement hurt 99.7% of class members by waiving their claims for nothing. hlli.org/wp-content/upl… /25
Penn quotes my colleague Melissa Holyoak as having "fond" recollections of Olson, but doesn't quote her to provide factual context for case she litigated on Olson's behalf. /26
So: the male attorney opposed to Olson is quoted impugning his motives. The female attorney who represented him only gets a quote saying she fondly recalls how nice he is. Probably more political bias than sexism, but it's a striking contrast. /27
Melissa could have easily explained Olson's objection. It's straightforward to anyone even casually familiar with class action objections, but this easy-to-understand viewpoint is entirely omitted. /28
Next: "In another high-profile case, Olson filed an amicus brief for the Cato Institute in 2015…"
Never happened, as anyone who glanced at the face of the brief could confirm. scotusblog.com/wp-content/upl… /29
Never happened, as anyone who glanced at the face of the brief could confirm. scotusblog.com/wp-content/upl… /29
@benjaminpenn and @BLaw abdicate responsibility for factual reporting because the Department of Labor unceremoniously accepted Olson's resignation. But that's like calling in a bomb threat and reporting on the evacuation as if it corroborated it. /30
@benjaminpenn @BLaw In response to criticism, @benjaminpenn reveals he apparently thinks it fine to slime someone for implementing "bad" policy. Misrepresentation apparently serves a greater good; is this what @BLaw stands for? /31
@benjaminpenn @BLaw Penn's hit piece concludes: "The abrupt end to his 18 days of government service now gives Olson an opportunity to resume his appellate practice as a private citizen." See! It was a good thing for Olson, an opportunity! /32
@benjaminpenn @BLaw Perhaps @BLaw should give @benjaminpenn the "opportunity" to work for partisan hack sites, as he'd clearly rather do than reporting. /33
@benjaminpenn @BLaw In the meantime, since the hatchet job contains several flat errors and the only pretext for posting it has evaporated, @BLaw should fix it.
Now we wait.
Looks like @BLaw had a different reporter write a follow up. No correction/retraction. It says: "Much of the criticism focused on the story’s characterization of the comments as anti-Semitic in light of context suggesting the comments were sarcastic."
@BLaw UPDATE: @BLaw took "Anti-Semitic" out of the headline before I began this tweet storm. I was working from an open tab and didn't notice the correction, which is still pretty lame and doesn't address any of the other errors. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-re…
Strangely, @BLaw has not tweeted its newer article about rehiring, but continues to to have tweets to original, falsely-premised article in its timeline.
Apparently, @BLaw staff instructed not to tweet out current story. But why retain tweets based on original, mistaken reporting?
Wonderful @ErikWemple post highlights error I didn't mention. "Actually: Olson’s story raises *no* questions about the Trump administration’s personnel-vetting procedures. It raises questions about Bloomberg Law’s story-vetting procedures." washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/…
