Justine asks on Facebook
Dan Charles is this fake?
This is fake…
and POLITICO has already stealth updated the article and it’s headline to reflect this.
First, they updated the headline to say “Trump owed” instead of “Trump owes”. It’s just a single letter, but the use of past tense shows that Trump no longer owes the Bank of China any money.
Second they added the following paragraphs (which if they followed standard journalistic standards and checked their facts before publishing the article, would probably NOT have published the article) and provides links to documents that Bank of China provided that back up the claims in this “correction”:
After the first version of this article was published, the Bank of China issued a statement Friday evening stating that it sold its debt on the building weeks after the 2012 loan on the property. Vornado Realty Trust owns 70 percent of the building.
“On November 7, 2012 several financial institutions including the Bank of China participated in a commercial mortgage loan of $950 million to Vornado Realty Trust,” said Peter Reisman, managing director and chief communications officer of Bank of China U.S.A. “Within 22 days, the loan was securitized and sold into the [commercial mortgage-backed securities] market, as is a common practice in the industry. Bank of China has not had any ownership interest in that loan since late November 2012.”
Third, it is important to note that as the article itself takes note of, Trump’s ownership was not direct nor was the loan to him. The loan was to the above mentioned Vornado Realty Trust. Trump was a minority investor in Vornado Realty Trust, which own numerous properties, including the one property that is the focus of this fake article.