The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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Stunning move! ABC deletes $6B Trump family exposé in less than 24 hrs. ‘because it’s false’

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BS BULLETIN:

  • ABC News published an investigation linking companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to more than $6 billion in government contracts — only for the original article to reportedly disappear from its main website.
  • A representative of Trump Jr.’s investment firm blasted the reporting, accusing ABC of confusing investment amounts, fundraising rounds and government contracts.
  • Don Jr. celebrated the apparent removal by taking a swipe at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had shared the original report.

ABC News thought it had a $6 billion story about Donald Trump’s sons. Donald Trump Jr. thought ABC had a $6 billion problem with its own reporting.

And somewhere between those two positions, the original ABC article apparently vanished.

Welcome to another exciting episode of Washington journalism, where sometimes the biggest development in an investigation is what happens to the investigation itself.

ABC published a report Wednesday examining government contracts awarded to defense companies with investment ties to Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric.

The network reported that those companies had secured more than $6 billion in active or promised federal contracts since receiving investments connected to the president’s sons.

The investigation included Anduril Industries, a defense technology company backed by 1789 Capital, where Don Jr. is a partner. ABC also examined other defense and technology companies with reported financial connections to the brothers.

The timing was politically combustible. President Trump had just announced a major defense manufacturing investment involving Anduril, and congressional Democrats were already raising questions about whether the president’s family relationships could create conflicts of interest.

It was the sort of story guaranteed to travel quickly through political social media. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared it. Then things got interesting.

The original report became unavailable at its main ABC News address, according to Mediaite, without an accompanying public explanation. But the story wasn’t completely gone. An ABC-owned local station continued carrying a version of the reporting.

Alexa Henning, a representative of 1789 Capital, challenged the ABC investigation in unusually blunt terms.

Her central complaint was that the network had allegedly confused the amount of money companies raised in financing rounds with the amount invested by Trump Jr.’s firm. Those are very different numbers.

Henning also disputed ABC’s characterization of 1789 Capital’s stake in Anduril and its description of other companies as being backed by the Trump brothers.

“This post shows you have literally zero financial literacy,” she wrote in response to someone sharing the ABC story.

She accused the reporter of conflating fundraising totals with actual investments by 1789 Capital. The distinction is significant. When a company raises billions of dollars from multiple investors, that doesn’t mean any one investor contributed the entire amount.

Henning also pointed out that some of the companies had received federal contracts during both the Biden and Trump administrations. That fact doesn’t automatically resolve every possible conflict-of-interest question, but it does complicate any suggestion that the companies’ government business began only after Trump’s return to the White House.

Henning called the article a biased attack and later urged people sharing it to delete their posts. Her position was unmistakable: ABC had gotten important financial details wrong.

Newsom had shared the ABC investigation, apparently eager to draw attention to the Trump family’s business interests. Don Jr. responded with a message that managed to mock both the network and the California governor.

“ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it’s false. Sounds about as long as your presidential campaign would last.”

Ouch.

An investment firm’s stake in a defense contractor can raise legitimate conflict-of-interest questions, especially when a president’s relatives are involved. But determining whether those relationships produced improper influence requires more than adding up contracts awarded to companies with investment ties to the family.

It requires evidence about ownership, decision-making and the procurement process. Those distinctions were central to the pushback from Trump Jr.’s representatives.

As of Thursday, the publicly available reporting did not establish why ABC’s main article had become unavailable. The network’s investigation nevertheless remained accessible through an ABC-owned station.

MY QUICK TAKE

There’s nothing wrong with investigating the business interests of a president’s family. In fact, journalists ought to do it, regardless of which party occupies the White House.

But when you’re throwing around $6 billion and suggesting possible conflicts involving the Pentagon, you’d better know the difference between a financing round, an ownership stake, and a government contract.

Those aren’t minor accounting details. They’re the foundation of the story.

And if an article disappears after a serious challenge, readers deserve to know why. Was it a correction? A technical problem? An editorial reconsideration? ABC hasn’t publicly supplied that answer in the reporting available so far.

Meanwhile, Don Jr. found Gavin Newsom standing nearby with the original article in his hand and couldn’t resist. The governor wanted to share a Trump family scandal. He wound up on the receiving end of a Trump family punchline.

Sometimes the follow-up story is more entertaining than the original.

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