A State Department official followed Trump's lead and created a fake Time magazine cover touting her accomplishments
- State Department official Mina Chang falsely claimed she had obtained a Harvard degree, drastically exaggerated parts of her resumé, and even created a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it.
- An NBC News investigation revealed that Chang presented the fake cover at her job interview for the State Department position, and even discussed it in a 2017 video interview.
- A Time spokesperson confirmed the cover was a fake, and an eagle-eyed Twitter user noticed the barcode was simply the numbers 1-10 written backward and then forwards.
- President Donald Trump himself famously created multiple fake Time magazine covers with his face on it, and even hung them in his properties and golf clubs throughout the United States for years.
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State Department official Mina Chang falsely claimed she had obtained a Harvard degree, drastically exaggerated parts of her resumé, and even created a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it, an NBC News investigation revealed.
Chang, who currently serves as deputy secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations, joined the Trump administration in April.
The NBC report said in the process of applying for the job, she "also invented a role on a UN panel, claimed she had addressed both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and implied she had testified before Congress."
Following President Donald Trump's own lead, Chang even took the extraordinary step of making a knockoff Time magazine cover with her face on it, presented it at her job interviews, and even discussed it in a 2017 video interview about her work as CEO of the non-profit Linking the World.
"Well, we started using drone technology in disaster response and so that was when the whole talk of how is technology being used to save lives in disaster response scenarios, I suppose I brought some attention to that," Chang said in the video interview, also uncovered by NBC.
A Time spokesperson confirmed to NBC that the cover was a fake, and an eagle-eyed Twitter user noticed the barcode was simply the numbers 1-10 written backward and then forwards.
Trump himself famously created multiple fake Time magazine covers with his face on it and even hung them in his properties and golf clubs throughout the United States for years. In the summer of 2017, Time formally requested that all Trump properties take down the fake magazine covers.
At the time, Washington Post reporter David Farenthold found that when scanned, the barcode on one fake Trump cover hanging in his properties linked to "software that lets you be a karaoke DJ."