White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called on ABC News to “immediately” retract a story reporting that Iran was planning to retaliate for American attacks by launching drone strikes on the West Coast.
An FBI alert from the end of February that was reviewed by ABC News read:
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 US conducted strikes against Iran. We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.
Leavitt called the ABC News story misleading because the intelligence was “unverified.”
“This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people,” Leavitt wrote Thursday.
“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?” Leavitt asked, adding, “TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”
ABC updated the story on Thursday and added the following editor’s note:
Editor’s note: The FBI has posted a fuller version of its alert to California authorities, which includes that the information was unverified. The latest version of this story has been updated with the full statement.
On CNN Thursday, Inside Politics host Dana Bash reported, “California governor Gavin Newsom says he’s been alerted about the unverified claims, but that there’s no imminent threat.”
Bash continued, “This morning, a statement purportedly from Iran’s new supreme leader threatened to attack American interests on, quote, ‘other fronts if the war continues.’”
“That’s pretty scary stuff,” Bash added. “I mean, never mind the politics of it. Just the sort of human response here in America. I mean, I know that this is, as we as we heard, unverified, but still hearing that, especially given what we heard from inside Iran this morning.”
Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI, Ben Williamson, also shared an apparent screenshot of the original bulletin, which included the term “unverified.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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