On Wednesday morning, Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm in which Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, spotted a new ABC News story scrutinizing the government contracts awarded to defense company Anduril Industries, which is financially backed in part by the president’s sons. It was strange, Henning thought. It seemed to come out of the blue, and Henning soon noticed the article contained significant inaccuracies about 1789 Capital’s investment in the company. She quickly confirmed that no one at ABC News—including the article’s author, desk assistant Nathan Lee—had contacted the firm for comment before publication.

Henning began to scramble as the story gained traction on social media, with high-profile Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Chris Murphy, sharing the story as evidence of corruption stemming from the Trump White House. Henning was unable to reach Lee, eventually connecting by phone with Justin Fishel, the senior coordinating producer at ABC News. Fishel told her he personally helped oversee the story and defended the reporting, Henning told Status, though he acknowledged the error of failing to reach out for comment before publication. “He said, ‘We worked on this for a while,’” Henning recalled. Fishel did not respond to requests for comment.

The story set off a daylong back-and-forth between Henning and ABC News, as the spokesperson pressed the network to retract the article and correct what she described as fundamental errors in its characterization of 1789 Capital’s investments and Trump Jr.’s role. By Wednesday evening, Henning escalated matters, warning that the company’s lawyers would be in touch if ABC took no further action. Around 8 p.m., she said, she received a call from Fishel, who told her the network had deleted the article. There was no indication, she said, that ABC intended to re-report the story or eventually republish it with an editor’s note. Henning assumed the network would issue a statement explaining the extraordinary decision.

None came. Instead, the Disney-owned network quietly scrubbed the story from its website, leaving the original URL to direct readers to a 404 error page. ABC declined to explain the mysterious disappearance to Status on Thursday, and by Friday, the episode had drawn wide attention, with several reporters, citing sources familiar with the matter, suggesting the story was removed because it was “published prematurely” and the network was still finalizing its reporting.

That justification, however, did not square with Henning’s account of her conversations with the ABC News editor, who she said had vigorously defended the article before abruptly removing it. “That narrative of incomplete reporting didn’t match up with the defense the editor gave me,” Henning told Status.

Indeed, Status has learned that events inside the Almin Karamehmedovic-led newsroom on Wednesday also complicated that narrative. I'm told the article was mentioned during the network’s regular 9 a.m. editorial call as part of the day’s digital rundown, suggesting at least some staffers were aware of its publication. Once the story went live, meanwhile, the network circulated it through its usual email distribution without raising any immediate alarms.

Multiple staffers told Status they were unaware of the article’s errors before the backlash erupted, with some learning of the controversy only after media reports revealed that it had vanished from the network’s website. Lee, whom colleagues described to me as a young, “enterprising” reporter, had been working on what was essentially a follow-up to previous ABC News investigative reporting, timed to coincide with Trump’s visit to Maryland to announce a public-private partnership with Anduril to build a new shipyard.

But Lee’s junior position at the network raises another question: Why would this sensitive story involving the president’s family not be assigned to more senior journalists at the company? Fishel was involved ahead of the story’s initial publication, Status has learned, something Henning said he also acknowledged during their conversation.

An ABC News spokesperson declined to provide comment for this story.

But the errors in this piece, meanwhile, appear to also trace back to previous ABC reporting. In March, ABC News’ investigative unit published a report by Lucien Bruggeman headlined, “Trump sons investing in domestic drone production businesses,” examining the president’s sons’ investments in companies that had secured government contracts. That article, which remains on ABC News’ website, frames 1789 Capital as exclusively “Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm” and says the fund took a “major stake” in Anduril Industries.

Lee’s follow-up drew on the same government contract data, according to people familiar with the story, but compounded earlier errors, most notably conflating the size of Anduril’s overall funding round with 1789 Capital’s actual investment. The result suggested a far larger financial relationship between the Trump-linked venture fund and the defense contractor than the figures supported.

Ultimately, late Friday afternoon, ABC News republished the article under a new headline, “New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest”—a notably more nuanced take than the original, “Trump sons' investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election.” An editor’s note sat at the top of the story, and a generic “ABC News” byline replaced Lee’s. “A version of this story published on Oct. 7 contained errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies,” the note read. “After subsequent reporting, this version contains corrected information and additional context regarding some of those investments, contracts and events.”

The revised story said 1789 Capital invested $50 million in Anduril as part of a $2.5 billion funding round last year, a “relatively small stake” in a company valued at more than $60 billion. And while Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789 Capital, he is one of six, alongside three founders, and does not sit on the three-person investment committee responsible for the fund’s allocation decisions, according to the firm.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has also publicly disputed the ABC reporting and its initial excuse in a series of posts on X. After the network’s claim that the story was prematurely published, Luckey accused the network of engaging in a “coverup operation” and asking its “buddies to spread the word that this was nothing more than a CMS publication timeline error.” He also posted a screenshot of an email Lee had sent after the original article was published, in which the reporter appeared to relay his editors’ decision to stand by the reporting. “Apologies, but my editors said we are standing by the language,” Lee wrote. “I’ll make sure to reach out to both of you directly for any future stories.”

Inside ABC News, meanwhile, the episode has generated considerable concern, I’m told, not only over the initial reporting mistakes but also over the network’s handling of the fallout. Several staffers worried that critics, eager to undermine the network’s credibility at a precarious time, had been able to capitalize on the controversy. Meanwhile, many also expressed sympathy for Lee, who colleagues argued had been building on earlier ABC reporting and was now bearing the brunt of a highly public backlash over a story that had senior oversight.

“Poor kid,” one ABC News staffer told Status. Lee has since deleted his X account, amid the intense criticism, much of which has been directed at him personally. Lee did not respond to a request for comment from Status.

For some inside the network, the more troubling issue was ABC News’ reluctance to take public responsibility. Rather than promptly acknowledging the inaccuracies and explaining the retraction, the network allowed the story to vanish without a word, creating an information vacuum that Trump Jr., Luckey, and other critics quickly filled with their own accounts. “If they put out a statement immediately explaining the retraction, this might not even be on your radar,” one ABC News staffer argued.

Indeed, the timing could hardly be worse for ABC News, or for much of the news media, which has been navigating an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign from the Trump administration. The sequence of events—a Trump-linked investment firm threatening legal action, ABC editors initially defending their reporting, and then the network subsequently deleting the story without explanation—has raised uncomfortable questions about how the news organization responds to outside pressure.

Of course, this comes less than two years after the network agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump for approximately $16 million, a decision that prompted widespread criticism. Since then, FCC chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly targeted ABC programming, including late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and the hosts of “The View,” over what he considers politically unbalanced content. Carr escalated things even further by calling for an early review of the network’s broadcast licenses, prompting the Disney-owned network to file an unprecedented First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC. This weekend, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno asked Carr to open an investigation into this incident.

Even now, the Department of Justice is investigating the five television networks that operate the White House press pool, including ABC News, after they suspended coverage in solidarity with CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, which Trump had barred from the White House grounds.

Against that backdrop, ABC News’ handling of the 1789 Capital story has become more than a single flawed article. By the time ABC finally republished with corrections, the controversy had already become a referendum on the network’s credibility, with a junior reporter absorbing much of the criticism.

As one industry veteran observed, the incident has received comparatively little scrutiny relative to the uproar that might have followed a similar misstep at CNN or CBS News. Had the same sequence of events unfolded at one of those outlets, the veteran argued, the episode would have been “front-page news.”

The latest episode of Power Lines is out.

In this week’s episode: David Ellison met the press—including Status—after securing his hard-fought deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. We break down what he told us about his relationship with Donald Trump—and what we can decipher from his answers to Anderson Cooper in an internal town hall.

Plus, prominent tech journalist Casey Newton joins us to explain why he’s returning to Elon Musk’s X platform years after deciding to leave the right-wing fever swamp. Newton also responds to a surprise message from Kara Swisher.

You can watch on YouTube—or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy the program, subscribe so you never miss an episode!

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