Conservative Lawyer Reinstated to Trump Administration After Fake News Got Him Fired

In a particularly egregious episode of “cancel culture,” conservative lawyer Leif Olson was pressured to resign over Facebook comments that a reporter took out of context and sent to the press contact at the Department of Labor (DOL). On Wednesday, almost a week after Olson resigned, the DOL announced that he would be returning to work. While Bloomberg Law reported his Facebook comments out of context, suggesting they were anti-Semitic, many other outlets — both liberal and conservative — explained that the remarks were clearly satirical.

“On Friday, August 30, 2019, Senior Policy Advisor of the Wage and Hour Division, Leif Olson offered his resignation and the Department accepted. Following a thorough reexamination of the available information and upon reflection, the Department has concluded that Mr. Olson has satisfactorily explained the tone of the content of his sarcastic social media posts and will return to his position in the Wage and Hour Division,” the DOL statement reads. . .

“A recently appointed Trump Labor Department official with a history of advancing controversial conservative and faith-based causes in court has resigned after revelations that he wrote a 2016 Facebook post suggesting the Jewish-controlled media ‘protects their own,'” began Bloomberg Law reporter Ben Penn. His article pulls Olson’s clearly sarcastic Facebook thread out of context.

Olson seems to have explained himself to DOL, but he was asked to resign, anyway. Only after the backlash to the Bloomberg Law article and the forced resignation did the DOL reconsider.

This welcome restoration confirms that the DOL effectively forced Olson to resign. Yet it also raises the question: why didn’t DOL trust Olson when he explained the comments? Why did it take public backlash to get Olson reinstated? (Read more from “Conservative Lawyer Reinstated to Trump Administration After Fake News Got Him Fired” HERE)

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