Trump’s White House slammed ABC News a day after their report that Iran was threatening drone strikes on California.
Reports went out Wednesday that the FBI sent a memo to California police in late February warning about Iran’s desire to attack the West Coast in retaliation to U.S. attacks. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called out the report for being “unverified.”
“This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people,” Leavitt wrote. “They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY? TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”
Leavitt was not the only member of the White House press team who took issue with ABC News. Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly also took to social media to call out the organization.
“Outlets like ABC have been playing fast and loose despite many Americans relying on them for solid, factual reporting during this conflict,” Kelly said.
ABC News was the first to break the story. Following the release of the FBI’s entire report on Thursday, a person close to the matter told TheWrap that reporting was updated to reflect any new information.
The FBI’s memo was sent out to Southern California police in February warning about the possibility of Iran wanting to target the West Coast with drones in response to the U.S. attacks on their country.
“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the U.S. conducted strikes against Iran,” the memo read.
Despite the White House’s urging that the ABC News story is “false reporting,” California Governor Gavin Newsom assured citizens Wednesday that they were taking the report seriously. The Academy Awards also announced they were beefing up security for their big night on Sunday.
