The venture capital firm 1789 Capital says it has not ruled out legal action against ABC News after the network deleted, then quietly republished, a story examining investments tied to President Donald Trump’s adult sons.
“We still have our attorneys completely plugged into this, and we’re not taking options off the table because they can’t get away with writing completely false things and hit jobs,” said Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for 1789 Capital, in comments to Fox News Digital. “We’re not going to back down. We’re gonna keep calling them out and make sure that people know the truth.”
The dispute centers on an ABC News article that claimed companies linked to Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had secured billions of dollars in government contracts. The original version, headlined “Trump sons’ investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election,” said 1789 Capital — where Trump Jr. is a partner — had acquired a major stake in defense contractor Anduril Industries through a $2.5 billion investment.
That figure actually reflected Anduril’s total fundraising round. 1789 Capital’s own investment was roughly $50 million, according to the firm.
ABC News removed the story without explanation, then republished a revised version on Friday under a new headline, “New shipyard announced amid earlier Democratic concerns about potential conflicts of interest.” The byline of the original reporter was replaced with “ABC News,” and the piece now includes an editor’s note acknowledging errors involving investments, government contracts and the timeline of events. It also clarifies that Trump Jr. does not sit on the firm’s investment decision-making committee. The original article remains viewable through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The editor’s note does not specify what the errors were or include an apology to 1789 Capital, something Henning said falls short. “ABC has a long history of doing this to the president and his family,” she said, adding that there is “no evidence” the Trumps did anything improper.
Despite the inaccuracies, the original story spread widely on social media and was shared by prominent Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Henning said nobody at ABC News contacted 1789 Capital for comment before the first version was published, and that an ABC journalist defended the report before it was deleted. “If you don’t understand investments in venture capital growth, you shouldn’t be reporting on it,” she said. “When you’re a reporter, you should want to understand what you’re reporting on.”
She also pushed back on characterizations from other reporters that the story had simply been “published prematurely.” “I knew that was also a lie because that was not told to me the day the story went up — the editor fully stood by it … they know they were wrong. They just don’t want to admit it,” Henning said.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, has called on the Federal Communications Commission to investigate how the report came to be published. Henning attributed the error to a mix of “laziness” and a desire to score a “good hit on the Trump family,” adding, “They just didn’t think they would get push back.”
She said she has heard privately from “multiple people inside ABC” who have described the episode as a “huge mess up.” “This story was just false on the facts,” Henning said.
According to Henning, lawyers for 1789 Capital have already been in contact with ABC and its parent company, Disney. “We’re still monitoring the coverage and still monitoring what they say, so we’ll see,” she said of a possible lawsuit.
ABC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The controversy follows a separate dispute between Trump and the network: in 2024, Trump agreed to a $16 million settlement of a defamation lawsuit against ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos incorrectly stated on air that Trump had been found liable for “rape.”
