ABC News pulled an anti-Trump story off its website and then republished a substantially rewritten version after the network's central claim collapsed — and now a sitting U.S. senator wants the federal government to find out who signed off on it.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, sent a letter Saturday to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr demanding a formal investigation into the network over the October 7 report involving President Donald Trump's sons and defense contractor Anduril Industries, according to Fox News. The original article claimed companies connected to the president's sons had secured billions in government contracts, including through venture capital firm 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. serves as a partner.
The numbers didn't hold up. ABC News originally reported that 1789 Capital acquired a major stake in Anduril through a $2.5 billion investment. That figure was actually Anduril's broader fundraising round, according to the network's revised version — 1789 Capital's investment was approximately $50 million. The rewritten article, published Friday, also acknowledged errors involving investments, government contracts and the chronology of events, and clarified that Trump Jr. does not serve on the firm's investment decision-making committee.
Luckey: 'Totally Bogus'
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey didn't wait for the correction. The billionaire defense tech entrepreneur publicly called the story "totally bogus" on social media, and even Brian Stelter — hardly a conservative — questioned ABC's judgment, according to RedState's account of the fallout.
What made the error costly for ABC was the geography. In January, Anduril announced it is pouring nearly $1 billion into Ohio's economy to build a five-million-square-foot production facility manufacturing Barracuda-500 drones. That project is already underway.
Moreno framed the story as an attack on that investment, not just on the Trump family.
"Thus, I urge the Commission to open a formal investigation into ABC News's political hit job. We must know who signed off on the publication of this false story, who may have asked to profit from the attack, and whether ABC News's conduct violated its obligations as a licensee," Moreno said in the letter to Carr.
The senator also leaned on the legal obligations that come with a broadcast license. "ABC News appears under broadcast licenses issued by the FCC. These licenses are a privilege, not a right. They require service of the public interest," he said.
This Is Not ABC's First $15 Million Mistake
There is recent precedent for the network paying a price for a Trump story that didn't survive scrutiny. In 2024, Disney and ABC News agreed to a $15 million settlement plus roughly $1 million in legal fees after Trump sued for defamation over anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly telling viewers on air that Trump had been found "liable for rape" in the E. Jean Carroll civil cases — a claim that is categorically false.
ABC News has not offered a public explanation for why the October 7 story was pulled or who made the call, and the network has not said whether a correction notice was appended before the revised piece went live. The FCC has not announced whether it will act on Moreno's request. Carr, who chairs the commission, has not publicly responded to the letter as of Sunday evening.
The practical question for the roughly five million square feet of Ohio factory space already under construction is whether a national news organization can publish a false financial claim about the firms behind it and simply swap in a new version with no accounting. Moreno's answer, put to the FCC in writing, is no.
Our Take
Read the sequence of events and tell us it looks like a mistake.
ABC News published a story built on a number it got wrong by a factor of fifty — $50 million reported as $2.5 billion — and the error ran in the direction that hurt the president's family, the defense contractor, and a billion-dollar factory in a state whose senator sits on the relevant oversight committees. Then the story vanished. No editor's note pinned to the top. No on-air correction. Just a quiet rewrite on a Friday, when fewer people are watching.
That is not how a newsroom handles an honest error. That is how a newsroom handles a story it got caught on.
Fifteen million dollars was supposed to buy ABC News some institutional caution. It bought two years. George Stephanopoulos repeated a false rape-liable claim on air until a lawsuit made it stop. Now the same network misstated a defense investment figure by billions and let the internet discover it before the correction desk did.
The FCC question is legitimate and it is narrow: broadcast licenses are a privilege conditioned on serving the public interest, and the public interest is not served by publishing false financial claims about private firms. If ABC has a process — a standards desk, a legal review, a sign-off chain — then Moreno's letter asks it to produce the receipts. If the network can't or won't, that silence tells you more than any correction ever could.
André 300 workers in Ohio and every American who still expects a headline to match the underlying number should want that answer too. So here's the question for ABC: who wrote the $2.5 billion, who approved it, and what exactly changed between Wednesday and Friday?
Patriots, the correction was forced. Now the accountability should be too. Call your representatives and tell them you want the FCC to answer Sen. Moreno — and tell ABC News that a deleted story is not a retraction.
