ABC News is facing renewed scrutiny after quietly retracting and then revising a report that cast President Donald Trumps sons as major beneficiaries of Pentagon-linked investments.
As reported by Conservative Daily News, the network initially published an Oct. 7 article claiming that a $2.5 billion investment in U.S. defense contractor Anduril came from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Without any clear public explanation, ABC News appeared to remove the story from its website, only to later restore it in altered form under the more muted headline, New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest. The original, more inflammatory headline Trump sons investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election was dropped, and an editors note was added to the revised version, though the note itself was left conspicuously empty, reading simply, .
The lack of transparency from a major legacy outlet has fueled questions about whether the initial piece was driven more by partisan narrative than by verified facts. The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to ABC News for comment, but the network has yet to offer a substantive public accounting for how such a high-profile story could be published and then scrubbed so quickly.
According to Fox News, a spokesperson for 1789 Capital emphasized that the corrected article now makes clear Trump Jr. does not sit on the three-member committee that actually makes the firms investment decisions. That clarification undercuts the original insinuation that President Trumps son was personally steering billions in defense-related investments for his own benefit.
The revisions followed a pointed statement from 1789 Capital spokesperson Alexa Henning, who said the firm does not have a major stake in Anduril, according to Fox News. Henning went further, blasting the original reporting as a basic failure to understand how capital markets work, stating, Heres a small lesson, that I also explained to ABC, the reporter who is a complete idiot conflated raising funds with investment by 1789. Those are two separate actions.
Even as ABC News attempted to downplay the episode, some in the media establishment tried to frame the debacle as a mere timing issue. CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter wrote in an X post Friday that he was told ABC Newss original piece was published prematurely, but conceded that was obviously not a sufficient explanation and suggested more revelations might follow.
Henning swiftly rejected Stelters spin, arguing the problem was not timing but accuracy. Lol no, she wrote on X, pointing out that ABCs original story went viral with many prominent Dems reposting. It wasnt until we pointed out the majority if not all of it was false that they deleted it.
Among those Democrats amplifying the now-corrected narrative was California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared on X that [t]he American people were fleeced and [a]ccountability is coming. Trump Jr. fired back the same evening, noting the speed of ABCs retreat, writing that ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because its false. Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last.
The clash is layered with personal history and political theater, given that Trump Jr. was engaged to Newsoms ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, from around December 2020 until late 2024 after dating since 2018. Guilfoyle, now serving as the U.S. ambassador to Greece, is herself under scrutiny following a report that she asked a donor backing President Trump to quietly send her $100,000 just days before her Senate confirmation, while Trump Jr. has since married socialite Bettina Anderson in December 2025 and Newsom has been married to actress Jennifer Siebel since 2008.
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