ABC News has reposted its deleted story on Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump with a correction admitting errors about investments, contracts and dates. We compared the corrected story with the original's own words. The headline "$6 billion" claim is gone, and so is the reporter's name. What is left is a much smaller story than the one that went viral.

ABC Pulled the Story in Less Than a Day

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, ABC News published a digital story headlined "Trump sons' investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election." By Thursday morning the page returned an error. Mediaite reported that ABC removed it "with the network offering no public correction, editor's note, or explanation."

By then the story had already spread. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared it on X with the line "The American people were fleeced. Accountability is coming," and the Washington Free Beacon reported his post drew 900,000 views. Donald Trump Jr. answered Newsom directly: "ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it's false. Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last."

What the Correction Note Admits

On Friday evening ABC put a new version online at a new address, under a new headline: "New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest." The subheadline now leads with the other side of the story: "Donald Trump Jr. is not involved in investment decisions, firm says."

That note is vague about which errors. So we lined up the corrected text against what the original actually said, using the passages that The National News Desk, Mediaite and the Free Beacon quoted from it before it vanished.

The $6 Billion Claim Did Not Survive

The original's core finding was a number. "An ABC News analysis found defense companies backed by the president's sons, including Anduril, have now raked in more than $6 billion dollars in active or promised government contracts since those investments were made," it said, as quoted by The National News Desk. It also said Anduril had won "135 other" government contracts worth about $1.8 billion since the investment.

Neither figure appears in the corrected story. There is no total at all. In place of the "since those investments were made" framing, ABC now writes that Anduril "has won substantial government contracts under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to federal contracting records." That is close to the exact objection 1789 Capital spokeswoman Alexa Henning made on X, that "many of these companies have gotten government contracts during Biden AND Trump."

One Company and One Brother Dropped Out

The original named drone maker Powerus. According to Mediaite's summary, ABC said Powerus lists the Trump brothers as "notable investors," got its first Air Force purchase order a month after announcing their investment, and later won a contract worth up to $90 million. Powerus is not mentioned anywhere in the corrected version.

Eric Trump got a similar edit. The original headline was about "Trump sons," and its text called Anduril "one of the largest manufacturers to receive an investment from Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump." The corrected story ties every investment to 1789 Capital, where Trump Jr. is a partner. Eric Trump's name now shows up only inside a statement from the brothers' spokesperson.

The byline changed too. The Free Beacon identified the original reporter as Nathan Lee, an early-career fellow in ABC's Washington bureau, and reported the story "does not appear to have been broadcast on television." The corrected version is credited only to "ABC News."

A "Major Stake" Turned Out to Be $50 Million

The original said 1789 Capital "claimed a major stake in Anduril in June 2025 from a $2.5 billion investment into the company." The corrected story says 1789 Capital "invested $50 million into Anduril Industries as part of a larger $2.5 billion funding round," calls it "a relatively small stake," and notes Anduril "has been valued at over $60 billion."

Do the math with ABC's own new numbers. The firm put in one-fiftieth of that funding round. Measured against a $60 billion valuation, $50 million is less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the company. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey had called the story "totally bogus," and, per the Free Beacon, said Anduril gave the reporter data showing a $50 million stake, around 0.1 percent of the company.

The corrected story also carries facts that cut against the original's timeline. A 1789 Capital spokesperson says the firm began investing in Firehawk in 2023, "during the Biden administration, predating the involvement of Donald Trump Jr." ABC now notes that PsiQuantum's DARPA work "predates the Trump administration," and that Hadrian "worked on federal projects during the Biden administration." The original, per Mediaite, said 1789 Capital invested $391 million in Hadrian. The new version says only that the firm invested "through two funding rounds" and gives no amount.

Most of the $6.6 Billion Shipyard Is Anduril's Own Money

Both versions hang the story on Tuesday's announcement at Sparrows Point, Md., where President Trump and Anduril unveiled a $6.6 billion submarine-parts shipyard. The corrected lede still calls it "a $6.6 billion investment." The corrected story does not spell out who is paying.

Anduril's own announcement, as reported by Manufacturing Dive, says the company will invest $3.7 billion and the remaining $2.9 billion comes through a Navy contract, with payments made "based on production outcomes." At least one trade report described the Navy figure as a ceiling value rather than a firm obligation. So more than half of the headline number is a private company spending its own capital to build in Baltimore County.

The Hadrian deal the story cites works the same way. The Navy's March 20 release says its $900 million from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act combines "with $1.5 billion in private capital" for a submarine-parts factory in Cherokee, Ala. Navy Secretary John Phelan called it "the first of three facilities designed to address the most critical bottlenecks in the maritime industrial base."

The Corrected Story Still Rounds Up One Deal

ABC's new version says rare-earth magnet maker Vulcan Elements "secured a $620 million loan from the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital." The Pentagon announcement ABC links for that claim was a joint $700 million "conditional loan commitment," according to ExecutiveGov's write-up of the November 2025 release, with $620 million for Vulcan and $80 million for ReElement Technologies.

A conditional commitment is a promise with strings, not a check. We could not find a public record saying whether that loan has since closed, so we are not claiming it hasn't. But the word "secured" in a corrected story describes the deal more firmly than the government's own announcement did.

What ABC Still Has Not Explained

ABC News did not answer requests for comment from Mediaite or the Free Beacon, and the reporter told the Free Beacon "No comment." The editor's note does not say who flagged the errors, why the story came down with no notice for more than a day, or why the corrected version needed a new address instead of a note on the old one.

There is a real story left. Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote 1789 Capital in August questioning its investments, and senior Democrats asked the Pentagon inspector general to look at the contracting process in May, Mediaite reported. ABC's corrected story keeps those concerns, and it keeps the firm's answer that Trump Jr. sits off the three-person committee that picks investments. A Pentagon official told ABC that "outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Department's funding decisions."

That is a fair fight to report. It is a much smaller story than "billions in Pentagon contracts," and ABC only found that out after the bigger one had already done its work. This is the same network that paid $15 million toward Trump's presidential library to settle his defamation suit over George Stephanopoulos's on-air claims, as the Free Beacon noted. Newsom's post drew 900,000 views. Far fewer will read a correction posted on a Friday night under a headline about a shipyard.

Top photo: Donald Trump Jr. speaking at the 2025 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz. (Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)