Politico accused of falsely claiming that Trump owes money to Bank of China

Breitbart:

Politico edited on Saturday morning a story claiming Donald Trump owes millions to the Bank of China for a loan on a New York City office building, hours after Breitbart News exposed the story as false.

The story now begins with a note that it has been “updated to include comment from the Bank of China and additional reporting.” Despite the initial story being substantively incorrect and getting several details wrong, Politico did not issue a formal correction, as standard journalistic good practice would indicate they should. What’s more, the story continues to be wrong in several places.

The original story’s headline was “Trump owes tens of millions to Bank of China.” Now it is “Trump owed tens of millions to Bank of China.” But that claim is still wrong. Trump never owed tens of millions to Bank of China, as Breitbart News reported Friday. The subhead is” The president’s financial dealings with the state-owned bank complicate his attacks on Biden,” another false claim that remains in the story.

The Washington, DC, based media company falsely reported Friday that Trump owes millions to the Bank of China for a loan financing a building located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. The story said that the president would have to pay tens of millions of dollars to the state-controlled banks because the loan was coming due shortly, a situation which it described as “unprecedented.”

Breitbart News reported Friday that the story was wrong. President Trump is not the debtor and Bank of China is not the creditor on the loan to 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Trump is the minority partner in a real estate deal that owns the building, had nothing to do with arranging the loans, and is not liable for their repayment. Bank of China was one of a consortium of lenders in 2012 that provided $950 million but sold its interest days later when the loan was repackaged into bonds for investors.
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The headline on the story claimes “Trump owed tens of millions to Bank of China.” That is also false. Trump never owed money to China, the Vornado controlled trust did. And China’s interest in the loans was extinguished in a matter of days, eight years ago.
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This is another one of those stories that give the impression that editors and proofreaders are not considered essential employees at news organizations anymore.   Politico should burn the source for this misinformation.  What they should have done is hire a lawyer to review the allegations and the documentation on the loan.  It should not have been that hard to fact check the allegations.

This has the appearance of sloppy journalism where the Trump-hatred of the media outlet overruled the professional responsibility to fact check their own story.