Eric Trump, a son of President Donald Trump, backed a Republican senator’s demand for a federal investigation of ABC News on Monday, Oct. 12, 2026, over a since-corrected report on his family’s investment ties to the defense contractor Anduril Industries.
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has opened an investigation into ABC News, an FCC source told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Monday. The probe followed a letter from Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio.
Eric Trump posted on X: “Thank you @berniemoreno — can’t wait to participate!”
He continued: “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.”
The Senator’s Letter to Carr
A letter Moreno sent to Carr on Saturday, Oct. 10, pressed for a formal inquiry into what the senator described as a political hit job. Three questions drove the request: who approved the story, who stood to gain from it, and whether the network breached its licensee obligations.
Moreno argued that broadcast licenses are a privilege that carries a public-interest duty. He called the report “false, inflammatory, and deliberately malicious.”
“You would expect such a comically botched cover-up in Soviet Russia, not the United States of America,” Moreno wrote in the letter.
The senator also pointed to the economic stakes in his home state of Ohio, where Anduril is developing its Arsenal-1 manufacturing plant. The company puts the project at nearly $1 billion and more than 4,000 jobs. Moreno argued that the reporting put those jobs at risk and that Ohio workers deserve accountability.
The Report and Its Deletion
ABC News published the article on Wednesday, Oct. 7, under the headline “Trump sons’ investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election.” Active or promised government contracts worth more than $6 billion had gone to defense companies backed by the president’s sons, the report said.
The report said 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is one of six partners, claimed a major stake in Anduril in June 2025 through a $2.5 billion investment. Anduril has received 135 other federal contracts, worth around $1.8 billion, since that investment, according to the report.
The report also noted a $6.6 billion contract for Anduril to build a state-of-the-art Navy shipyard facility in Baltimore, which President Trump announced on Tuesday, Oct. 6.
The story disappeared less than 24 hours after publication with no public explanation, and the link redirected to an error page. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, had shared it on X in a widely viewed post. In a reply, Donald Trump Jr. said the network had pulled the article within a day because it was false.
What the Revised Version Says
ABC News republished a substantially revised version on Friday, Oct. 9, under the headline “New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest.” The network replaced the original reporter’s byline with “ABC News.” An editor’s note was appended as well, conceding errors in the way the piece had characterized company investments, government contracts and the order in which events unfolded.
1789 Capital’s investment came to roughly $50 million within the $2.5 billion funding round, the revised account said — a comparatively small position in a company valued at more than $60 billion. It said 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. ABC told other outlets the story had been published “prematurely,” but Semafor reported that editors had initially stood by it, citing emails between the reporter and an Anduril spokesperson.
The original piece was written by investigative reporter Nathan Lee, who came to 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.
Latest Clash With the Network
The Trump family and the network have clashed before, and this episode is the latest round. A defamation lawsuit brought by President Trump was settled by ABC News in December 2024, with the network paying $15 million to his presidential library plus $1 million in legal fees. The network also published a statement of regret concerning on-air claims by anchor George Stephanopoulos about the E. Jean Carroll case.
All eight ABC-owned television stations were ordered by the FCC in April 2026 to file for license renewal far earlier than the schedule required, an unusual move. Disney, ABC’s parent company, has gone to court to block that review, describing it as a retaliatory campaign against the network. According to the commission, the early renewal stemmed from its investigation into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
