Here is the ruling on one heated and unresolved moment at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate: the former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, was right. She didn’t order a bunch of fancy curtains, which Senator Scott indicated she had in a gross misuse of public funds.

Also, Mrs. Haley never asked for a piano to adorn her UN residency, although it was there — and I believe I was the first to tickle its well-tuned ivories. 

The two formerly-chummy Carolinians evidently came to California armed with oppo-research files on one another. Mrs. Haley was on the attack all night, snapping at several of her Reagan Library’s stagemates. Ready for battle, Mr. Scott pulled out an old New York Times clipping from 2018, a story about $50,000 curtains that were bought on the taxpayers’ dime for the ambassador’s new official residence. 

“Did you send them back?” Mr. Scott demanded. “Bring it on,” the former South Carolina governor muttered before berating the man she had, in more cordial times, named as the Palmetto State’s senator. “Do your homework,” Mrs. Haley said. “You got bad information,” the curtains “were there before I ever showed up at the residence.” A shouting match ensued before the dispute was resolved.

Here is the source of the confusion: On September 13, 2018, the Times published a story gamely headlined, “Nikki Haley’s View of New York Is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701.” It detailed how high-priced “customized and mechanized curtains for the picture windows in Nikki R. Haley’s official residence,” were lavishly purchased despite “deep budget cuts” and “frozen hiring” at the Department of State. 

Something about that story didn’t ring right. The First Avenue ambassador’s residence across from the UN building nwas leased by the State Department after the Communist Chinese purchased the Waldorf Astoria hotel. For decades, a suite there had served as the ambassador’s official residence. The Waldorf Towers had also been used by presidents visiting New York ever since John F. Kennedy.

Mrs. Haley and her family were first to use the new First Avenue, East River-view digs, which were hopefully free of Beijing’s listening devices. Shortly after moving in, the ambassador invited a small number of UN reporters for drinks. I didn’t pay much attention to the curtains, but did notice a grand piano sitting in its lonesome at one corner at the new place.

“Who plays?” I asked a family member, pointing to the instrument. “You won’t believe it,” was the answer, “this morning there was a knock on the door.” Movers then came in with new State Department-ordered furniture to fill the apartment, including the piano. “And to your question: No, no one here plays.”

After asking for permission, I sat down to try my luck with a few American Songbook standards. Some attendees joined in, singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon.” Fewer cared to belt out the slightly more complex Lerner and Loewe’s “On the Street Where You Live.” It probably wasn’t the best musical moment at that place, but certainly the first. Even the player — no McCoy Tyner he — quickly quit, mostly interested in an off-the-record chat with the ambassador on foreign affairs. 

As a well-tuned piano was wheeled-in without the family’s knowledge or need, the Times’ attack on Mrs. Haley’s curtains seemed off. Then, a day after publishing the original story, the newspaper of record changed the headline to “State Department Spent $52,701 on Curtains for Residence of U.N. Envoy.” 

The Times also issued a 92-word “editor’s note,” that acknowledged the previous headline created the “unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question.” The decision to lease the ambassador’s residence and purchase curtains “was made during the Obama administration,” the paper noted, adding, “the article should not have focused on Ms. Haley.”

At least on this issue, nor should have Mr. Scott. The lesson for political oppo-research sleuths: When sourcing newspapers, always read the correction before the original story.