Once again, in the mainstream media’s rush to ‘get President Trump,’ another outlet has taken another huge hit to what is left of its credibility: Politico.
The outlet claimed in a story published late last week that the president is beholden to the Bank of China for a 2012 loan in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the ‘note’ is coming due in 2022, right in the middle of his next term, should he win again in November.
But there’s just one problem with the claim: It isn’t true.
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According to a separately published explainer, there have been two corrections made to the story since it was first published as reporters uncovered additional information that disproved the original allegation.
“POLITICO published an article Friday morning on President Donald Trump’s business dealings with China. (“Trump owes tens of millions to the Bank of China – and the loan is due soon.”) Since then, new reporting and information have led us to update and correct the article after publication,” the news site reported Tuesday.
Oops.
The original story initially claimed that the Bank of China was involved in a nearly $1 billion refinancing deal, along with several other banks, that was made in 2012 with a New York City real estate venture in which the Trump Organization held a large, but minority, interest.
The article went on to assert that the president owes the state-owned bank in China tens of millions of dollars and that the loan is due in two years. But in reality, the Bank of China has nothing to do with the venture anymore and hasn’t for years:
On Friday evening, POLITICO received a statement from a representative for Bank of China USA, which had not been contacted beforehand, that the bank had sold off, or securitized, its debt shortly after the 2012 deal. A spokeswoman said the bank has no current financial interest in any Trump Organization properties. We updated the body of the article to take account of the bank’s statement. The original headline was changed to “Trump owed tens of millions to the Bank of China.”
As if that wasn’t enough, there was another problem with the story as well.
According to the explainer, a 2017 document that was filed by Wells Fargo, the loan servicing firm, listed the Bank of China as still having a financial interest in the property, which is located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, in Manhattan.
The record, known as a UCC3, said that the Bank of China had “secured” interest in the building’s fixtures as a means of protecting against default. The document is reportedly valid until 2022.
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But on Monday, Wells Fargo confirmed to Politico that the Bank of China had been erroneously listed on the document as a creditor; the financial firm is now working to correct the record with a new filing with the New York Department of Finance.
Opps again.
“Consequently, the story was updated a second time on Monday evening to take account of the apparent mistake in the public record,” Political said in its explainer.
“Our commitment at POLITICO is to journalism that gets its facts straight. We regret we fell short in this case,” it added.
But is that true? Hardly.
For example, Politico — like every other mainstream media outlet in DC — pushed for years the bogus “Russian collusion” theory along with the phony baloney “Trump dossier” despite a dearth of evidence in the former and regular debunking of the latter in 2018 by then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and GOP members of his panel.
The problem with the Politico story is the same one with many other ‘bombshell’ duds published by similar outlets over the course of Trump’s presidential run and tenure: Everybody in the mainstream media already believes the president was/is dirty, so their reporting reflects that bias.
Too bad for their credibility.
