Claim that Fox News reported on Mar-a-Lago foreclosure started as satire | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·4 min read
31
President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, on Aug. 26, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla.

The claim: Fox News reported Deutsche Bank filed a foreclosure notice on Mar-a-Lago

A Nov. 15 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter, with photos of former President Donald Trump and his sprawling Florida estate.

“BREAKING FOX NEWS Deutsche Bank has filed a notice to foreclose on Mar A Lago,” reads text in the post. “The Trump property is part of a larger estate lien that is 190m$ (sic) delinquent. Court documents show a 3.4b$ (sic) loan that's in default. Trump hasn't respond (sic) to repeated attempts for comment. Developing story.”

It was liked more than 3,000 times in 12 days. The original X post was shared more than 4,000 times in 12 days.

More from the USA TODAY Fact Check Team:

Our rating: False

A Fox News spokesperson says the claim is false. The text originated on a satirical social media account.

No foreclosure reports from Fox News

Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago, an expansive estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1985. The club's value has been one of several points of contention after a judge ruled in September that the former president committed fraud by overvaluing his assets.

But a claim that Fox News reported a foreclosure notice on the property is false, network spokesperson Connor Smith told USA TODAY.

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No other legitimate media outlets have reported anything about a foreclosure. Nor do any credible reports exist of two other components of the claim: a $190 million delinquency and a $3.4 billion loan in default.

No foreclosure notices have been filed against Trump or Mar-a-Lago, according to a search of Palm Beach County, Florida, public records.

Trump financed his 1985 purchase of Mar-a-Lago with an $8.5 million loan from Chase Manhattan Bank – not Deutsche Bank – the Miami Herald reported in 2022.

Deutsche Bank did loan Trump roughly $125 million in 2011, but that amount was for the purchase of Trump National Doral golf club in Miami under the condition that he maintain a net worth of at least $2.5 billion, according to an ABC News report on the October testimony of former bank executive Nicholas Haigh.

The assertion in the Instagram post stems from a Nov. 15 post on X by an account that describes itself as a “raw and unfiltered parody account.”

The Instagram post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where posts written as satire and originally presented that way are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.

The original, satirical post was made the day Trump asked a New York judge for a mistrial in his civil fraud trial. But the photo of the X post shown on Instagram is cropped to remove the identity of the user’s account and the date it was posted.

USA TODAY previously debunked a stolen satire claim originating from that X account, which posted that porn actor Stormy Daniels and new House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted to having a business relationship. Mar-a-Lago has been at the center of several false claims debunked in the past by USA TODAY, including one that Trump sold it to his oldest son and another that the FBI search of the property was ordered by President Joe Biden.

Deutsche Bank spokesperson Dylan Riddle declined to comment when reached by USA TODAY.

USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post and the original satire account but did not immediately receive a response.

The Associated Press also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim Fox News reported foreclosure of Mar-a-Lago | Fact check