ABC News reportedly tried to cover up why it pulled a story about Donald Trump Jr.

It’s always the cover-up.

Status and Semafor are both reporting that a claim by ABC News as to why it pulled an error-laden story about Donald Trump Jr.’s ties to a defense contractor is simply not true. The network says it deleted the story because it had accidentally been “published prematurely” before it was finished. Those damn content-management systems.

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But Natalie Korach writes for Status (sub. req.) that a spokeswoman for 1789 Capital, which lists Donald Trump Jr. as one of its partners and which invested in the defense contractor, says she spent the better part of last Wednesday going back and forth with ABC News as they vigorously defended the story. The article was finally pulled on Wednesday night with no explanation, only to reappear on Friday with some significant edits. “That narrative of incomplete reporting didn’t match up with the defense the editor gave me,” 1789 spokeswoman Alexa Henning told Korach.

At Semafor, Max Tani reveals that “emails between ABC News and its subjects, provided to Semafor, show the network seeking to downplay its errors by misrepresenting its own processes.” He quotes reporter Nathan Lee as telling a spokesperson for Anduril Industries, the defense contractor, “Apologies, but my editors said we are standing by the language. I’ll make sure to reach out to both of you directly for any future stories.”

The underlying story is complicated, and the actual facts don’t make the Trumps look good. (Eric Trump’s investments in defense industries are detailed as well.) Here is the lead of the revised story:

President Donald Trump and defense contractor Anduril Industries earlier this week announced a $6.6 billion investment to create a state-of-the-art shipyard in Maryland to manufacture components for Virginia-class submarines.

While the project was welcomed by many, it comes amid concerns raised by Congressional Democrats about defense companies that have received investments from a venture capital firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.

1789 Capital — which lists Donald Trump Jr. as one of six partners along with three founders — invested $50 million into Anduril Industries as part of a larger $2.5 billion funding round last year, according to the defense contractor’s founder.

That seems suboptimal, doesn’t it? The problem is that it’s preceded by an editor’s note that says the original — which you can read here — “contained errors in the description of certain company investments, government contracts and event chronologies.” After the lead, the revised story plays down both the amount of Trump Jr.’s investment and the extent of his involvement.

By the way, the CEO of Anduril is Palmer Luckey, a billionaire who, along with Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich, was recently named by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to conduct a study on the future of warfare. Katie McQue and Tom Bowman reported recently for NPR that Luckey and Musk’s involvement raises significant ethical issues because they could profit from their recommendations.

Disney-owned ABC has had a fraught relationship with Trump during his second term, settling a dubious lawsuit for $15 million; briefly taking late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air; and, more recently, showing some backbone by fighting an FCC investigation that could lead to its losing the licenses for eight local television stations that it owns — an investigation that has all the appearances of being politically motivated.

Tani writes that the essentials of the story about Donald Trump Jr. and Anduril are more or less correct:

Remove the numbers, and the most basic version of the story — the Pentagon is paying very large sums to a defense contractor in which the president’s sons have invested, and whose co-founder, Palmer Luckey, is a high-dollar Trump donor — is correct.

But that’s not good enough. Botching an important piece of reporting about the Trump family, and then prevaricating on why it was pulled, is not a smart move at any time, but especially at this particular moment.