Your comments don’t seem related to the article...just a phrase in a long article.
It’s a false premise.
Then again the Atlantic has a history of such lead-ins. There was an attack on GW Bush because he owned a baseball tearm (the Rangers) and the Astros played at Enron Field. Atlantic originally claimed he owned the team that played at Enron Field and after SEVERAL online published rewrites of the opener they had to drop their attempts at tying him to Ken Lay.