Eric Trump, a son of President Donald Trump, threw his support Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, behind a Republican senator’s demand for a federal investigation of ABC News over a since-corrected report on his family’s investment ties to defense contractor Anduril Industries.
“Thank you @berniemoreno — can’t wait to participate!” he wrote on X.
“You can’t publish a bull**** hit-piece, let it spread and go viral, then delete it 24 hours later, under the cover of darkness with no explanation or apology. Who approved it? Has the author been fired? @ABC owes us answers,” he continued.
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has opened an investigation into ABC News following a letter from Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, an FCC source told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Monday.
Senator’s Letter Cites Ohio Jobs
Moreno sent that letter to Carr on Saturday, Oct. 10, urging the commission to open a formal inquiry into what he called a political hit job. He demanded to know who signed off on the story, who stood to profit from it and whether the network violated its obligations as a licensee, arguing that the broadcast licenses the commission issues are a privilege that carries a public-interest duty.
“You would expect such a comically botched cover-up in Soviet Russia, not the United States of America,” Moreno wrote, calling the report “false, inflammatory, and deliberately malicious.”
The senator also pressed the economic stakes in his home state, where Anduril is developing its Arsenal-1 manufacturing plant — a nearly $1 billion investment the company says will create more than 4,000 jobs. Moreno said the workers whose jobs were put at risk by the reporting deserve accountability.
What ABC Published, Then Deleted
The article appeared Wednesday, Oct. 7, under the headline “Trump sons’ investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election.” It reported that defense companies backed by the president’s sons had taken in more than $6 billion in active or promised government contracts, and that 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is one of six partners, had claimed a major stake in Anduril in June 2025 through a $2.5 billion investment. Anduril has been awarded 135 other federal contracts since that investment, worth around $1.8 billion, the report said. It also noted the $6.6 billion contract President Trump announced Tuesday, Oct. 6, for Anduril to build a state-of-the-art Navy shipyard facility in Baltimore.
Less than 24 hours after publication, the story disappeared without public explanation, its link redirecting to an error page. On Friday, Oct. 9, ABC News republished a substantially revised version headlined “New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest,” with the original reporter’s byline replaced by “ABC News” and an editor’s note acknowledging mistakes in how the piece described company investments, government contracts and the sequence of events.
The revised account puts 1789 Capital’s investment at roughly $50 million within a $2.5 billion funding round — a comparatively small position in a company valued at more than $60 billion — and states that Donald Trump Jr. does not sit on the three-person committee that makes the firm’s investment decisions. Palmer Luckey, the Anduril co-founder who also founded Oculus VR, said the stake amounts to about 0.1 percent of the company. Alexa Henning, a 1789 Capital spokeswoman, said on X that the reporter had conflated money raised in a funding round with money her firm actually invested.
Henning told the newsletter Status that ABC News senior coordinating producer Justin Fishel defended the reporting to her before the network pulled it. Nathan Lee, the investigative reporter who wrote the original piece, joined ABC News in January 2026 as a David Kaplan Memorial Fellow in the Washington, D.C., bureau; his employment status is unclear. The story does not appear to have aired on television.
A Network Already Battling the Commission
Before the deletion, the report traveled widely. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, shared it on X in a widely viewed post. Donald Trump Jr. replied that the network had taken the article down within a day because it was false.
The fight is the latest between the Trump family and the network. ABC News settled President Trump’s defamation lawsuit in December 2024, paying $15 million to his presidential library plus $1 million in legal fees, and posted a statement of regret over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ on-air claims about the E. Jean Carroll case.
The new inquiry also lands on a network already fighting Carr’s agency in court. In April 2026, the FCC ordered all eight ABC-owned television stations to file for license renewal well ahead of schedule, an unusual move. Disney, ABC’s parent company, is suing to block that review, calling it a retaliatory campaign against the network; the commission has said the early renewal grew out of its investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
