ABC News Quietly Killed a Trump Family Story — Then Lied About Why

ABC News pulled an investigative story about Donald Trump Jr.'s financial ties to defense contractors, then falsely told the companies involved that the piece had been published "prematurely" — a characterization contradicted by its own internal emails and the network's official correction notice.

The original story, published October 7, centered on a $6.6 billion Pentagon deal with defense startup Anduril to build a high-tech submarine shipyard in Maryland. The piece highlighted that Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789 Capital, which it said had "claimed a major stake in Anduril" from a $2.5 billion fundraising round. Anduril's PR team pushed back hard, pointing out that 1789 had invested only $50 million — a fraction of the total — giving them roughly 0.13% ownership with no major investor rights. The company argued the wording made it appear 1789 had bankrolled the entire $2.5 billion round.

Reporter Nathan Lee initially defended the piece twice in writing, telling Anduril his editors had reviewed the language and were standing by it. Less than 24 hours later, the network reversed course entirely, yanking the story without explanation. ABC producer Peter Charalambous then emailed both Anduril and drone contractor Powerus to say the story had been "published prematurely" — the same spin an unnamed network source fed to media reporters. But the correction notice ABC attached to its republished version told a different story: it explicitly acknowledged "errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies" — the language of factual mistakes, not an accidental early publication.

The republished piece, rewritten by Charalambous, ran without a byline and without any editor's note language suggesting it had been premature. Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich said the episode was emblematic of broader media failures, arguing the damage to his company's reputation was already done regardless of the correction. The core underlying story — that a major Pentagon contractor counts the president's sons among its investors, with co-founder Palmer Luckey also a high-dollar Trump donor — remains accurate even if specific figures were wrong. Congressional Democrats have signaled they plan to investigate the Trump family's entanglement with defense and government contracting if they retake power after the midterms.