ABC News Quietly Deletes Trump-Sons Investment Story After Anduril Founder Disputes Its Numbers

ABC News published a story on October 7 reporting that President Trump’s sons had invested, through a firm called 1789 Capital, in Anduril Industries, a defense technology company that holds government contracts. Within hours, the story was shared widely by lawmakers, commentators and other news outlets. By that evening, ABC had deleted it entirely, without a published correction or public explanation.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey disputed the article’s central claims almost immediately. In posts on X, he said 1789 Capital’s total investment in Anduril amounts to $50 million, which he described as roughly 1/1000th of the company — not the “major stake” the article described. He also challenged the report’s figure of more than $6 billion in “active or promised government contracts,” saying most of that total reflects hypothetical contract ceilings that, by design, exceed what the government or the contractor actually expects to spend.

“1789 Capital has only invested a total of $50M in Anduril, and this so-called ‘major stake’ is about 1/1000th of the company. The claim of $6B+ in ‘active or promised government contracts’ is also a lie,” Luckey wrote.

Luckey said Anduril contacted ABC and demanded a correction after the story went live. According to his account, the network made a single one-word grammar edit after repeated requests and otherwise stood by the reporting. He said ABC deleted the story roughly eight hours after he began criticizing it publicly, removing it from the website, hiding reader comments, and taking down the byline author’s X account — all without issuing any correction or retraction notice.

ABC News does not appear to have published any public retraction or correction related to the story, based on a review of its affiliated websites.

Even CNN staff raised questions

CNN senior politics reporter Andrew Kaczynski flagged the deletion, noting the story had been shared by numerous lawmakers and Democratic officials before vanishing. “This is absolutely wild per Status — ABC News completely retracted this story like two days ago just totally nuked it,” Kaczynski wrote. “No note, no explanation, no comment.”

CNN media reporter Brian Stelter added that he had been told the article was “published prematurely,” calling that explanation insufficient on its own.

Luckey rejected that framing outright, calling it a cover story. “This was a coordinated influence operation planted by our competition, not ‘premature publication,'” he wrote, arguing that ABC’s handling of the episode — refusing correction requests, then quietly erasing the piece — violated both Society of Professional Journalists ethics standards and the network’s own internal rules. He also said ABC had declined to speak with him in person when he approached a news crew covering the story.

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney weighed in on the exchange as well, referencing a scene from South Park in response to the unfolding saga.

As of this writing, ABC News has not issued a public statement explaining the deletion or addressing Luckey’s specific factual objections to the story.