On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 7, ABC News published a story with this headline: "Trump sons' investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election."
It said 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, had "claimed a major stake" in the defense company Anduril "from a $2.5 billion investment." It went on to tie companies supposedly "backed by" Don Jr. and Eric Trump to more than $6 billion in Defense Department contracts.
The real investment was $50 million. Anduril is worth more than $60 billion, so 1789 Capital owns about 0.13 percent of it.
The $2.5 billion wasn't 1789's money at all. That was the size of Anduril's entire funding round, which many investors contributed to. "Here's a small lesson, that I also explained to ABC," wrote 1789 spokeswoman Alexa Henning. The reporter "conflated raising funds with investment by 1789. Those are two separate actions."
Most of the rest of the story collapsed just as fast. Anduril had been winning federal contracts since 2019, six years before 1789 Capital invested a dollar. Many of the companies ABC named won government work under Joe Biden too. Henning said the claim that Vulcan Elements, Firehawk Aerospace and PsiQuantum were "backed by" the Trump sons was false. Don Jr. doesn't even make 1789's investment decisions. He isn't on the firm's three-member investment committee.
ABC had the denials before it published. The original story quoted the Pentagon saying, "No company receives preferential treatment." It quoted a spokesperson for the Trump brothers saying their investments reflect "independent business judgment" and that portraying them as improper was a "deliberate distortion of the facts." ABC ran those quotes and published the story anyway.
Anduril also tried to stop it. After the company objected, reporter Nathan Lee wrote back that he had "spoken to my editors and we have updated the story for accuracy," while adding that ABC was "standing by our language to that extent." Anduril said that still wasn't good enough. "It's still not clear," the company's spokesperson wrote. "I read your text and it reads as if they invested the full $2.5b." It asked ABC to state the actual $50 million investment and that the firm owns less than one percent.
Lee's reply was: "Apologies, but my editors said we are standing by the language."
It didn't take long for the story to spread. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared it with a message for his followers: "The American people were fleeced. Accountability is coming."
Don Jr. had the last word. "ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it's false," he replied to Newsom. "Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last."
By Thursday, the story was gone from ABC's website with no correction and no explanation. ABC told the companies involved that it had been "published prematurely." That explanation didn't last either. Status, a media newsletter that is no friend of the Trump family, reported that the story had been discussed on ABC's regular 9 a.m. editorial call the morning it ran and moved through normal channels without "any alarms." Even CNN's Brian Stelter called ABC's explanation "obviously not a sufficient explanation."
On Friday evening, ABC quietly put the story back up. The reporter's name was gone, replaced with a generic "ABC News" byline. The headline was gone too, replaced with "New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest." An editor's note admitted the original "contained errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies." In the new version, ABC conceded that 1789 Capital invested $50 million and that Don Jr. isn't involved in its investment decisions.
That was the extent of ABC's accountability: a deleted story, an excuse that didn't hold up, and a rewrite with nobody's name on it. The network has said it has no further comment. Don Jr. and Eric Trump have not received an apology.
The shipyard in that new headline is the $6.6 billion Anduril submarine yard President Trump announced in Baltimore the day before ABC's story ran, a project that will create 3,100 American jobs and give taxpayers a 40 percent stake. ABC took one of the biggest manufacturing wins of the year and used it as the backdrop for a smear against the president's family.
"A quiet unexplained withdrawal of a false article does not constitute a proper error correction," said billionaire investor Bill Ackman. "This is bad. @ABC must take responsibility for their failed journalism."
Henning described how the correction actually came about: "It wasn't until we pointed out the majority if not all of it was false that they deleted it."
ABC put a false accusation against two private citizens in front of millions of readers. The correction was an editor's note on a story with nobody's name on it.