(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) ABC News is facing ongoing scrutiny after publishing a controversial story about President Donald Trump’s sons and abruptly taking it down after critics challenged several claims that they slammed as false.
The story centered on the claims that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump’s “investments have won billions in Pentagon since” Donald Trump returned to office in 2025.
It claimed that companies in which the president’s sons had invested had benefited from more than $6 billion in government contracts.
ABC ran the story Wednesday but removed it an unknown time later that day. The article was no longer available on the outlet’s website by Thursday morning, according to Mediaite.
The page instead displayed an error message reading: “OPPS! PAGE UNAVAILABLE. The page either does not exist or is currently unavailable.”
The story was written by ABC reporter Nathan Lee, who, after the story’s deletion, deactivated his LinkedIn and X page. Headline USA has reached out to Lee but has not received a response.
Before the removal, the ABC story had enjoyed widespread promotion from Democratic politicians and lawmakers, most of whom used it nearly in unison to criticize the Trump family.
It is unclear who brought the story’s claims to ABC News’ attention or whether it was pitched by a Democratic operative.
One of the story’s critics, communications strategist and former Trump official Alexa Henning, speaking on behalf of 1789 Capital, said that ABC News conflated the size of the venture capital firm’s investment in defense contractor Anduril with the amount raised in a funding round.
Trump Jr. is one of six partners of 1789 Capital.
ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it’s false. Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last. https://t.co/Nzj34wwNnQ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 8, 2026
Separately, the story downplayed that some investments began under Biden, undermining its central narrative.
ABC News ultimately republished the story on Oct. 9 with a long editor’s note and corrections. The new version had no author byline and attributed the story to “ABC NEWS.”
The note read: “A version of this story published on Oct. 7 contained errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies. After subsequent reporting, this version contains corrected information and additional context regarding some of those investments, contracts and events.”
Even members of the legacy media expressed shock at ABC’s handling of the story, with CNN journalist Andrew Kaczynski describing the move as “absolutely wild” on X.
“ABC News completely retracted this story like two days ago just totally nuked it,” Kaczynski wrote. “No note, no explanation, no comment. It had been shared by tons of top lawmakers and democratic officials.”
The revised story now says that 1789 Capital invested $50 million in Anduril “as part of a larger $2.5 billion funding round last year, according to the defense contractor’s founder.”
