Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday that ABC News should retract its reporting and a related social media post “immediately” for “providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.”
Leavitt was responding to a post, in which ABC said that “the FBI has warned police departments in California that Iran wants to retaliate for American attacks by launching offensive drones against the West Coast, according to an alert reviewed by ABC News.”
“They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip,” Leavitt said. “The email even states the tip was based on ‘unverified’ intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story.”
“To be clear,” she added. “No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”
The FBI shared a screenshot of the alert, which noted it was “unverified.”
At press time, the ABC social media post remained live, but the news organization had added an editor’s note to its article, stating that 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.”
ABC also posted about the editor’s note on social media.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told JNS on Wednesday that he is “closely monitoring this warning, and California authorities and law enforcement have been placed in a higher security posture due to the increased threats emanating from the Iran war.”
“California’s emergency response capabilities and law enforcement teams are routinely in touch with federal authorities, and we will work to support them in the coming days and weeks,” the senator said.
A spokesman for Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, told JNS on Wednesday that the mayor’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department, “as always,” are “coordinating closely with state and federal partners to keep Angelenos safe.”
“At this time, there is no specific or credible threat to Los Angeles,” the mayor’s office said.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.) told JNS on Wednesday that the alert was “another repercussion of Trump’s war with Iran.”
“This conflict isn’t making us safer. It isn’t making life more affordable, and now seven service members are dead, and the FBI is warning of Iranian drone attacks targeting California,” the congresswoman said. “I am very concerned about the safety of my constituents and have requested a briefing on this threat.”
