The Trump administration debunked reports on Thursday that Iran threatened to target California in retaliation for the U.S.-Israel military campaign.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt urged ABC News to retract its report that the FBI warned police departments in California that Iran planned to launch offensive drones against the West Coast, saying the story was based on false information by unverified intelligence.
"This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people,"
Leavitt wrote in response to the network's story. "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."
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson
shared a screenshot on social media of what he said was the “actual” FBI alert that went out to Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) partners and compared it with a screenshot of ABC News’s statement.
“You will notice the word left out —Unverified,” Williamson stated.
The network has since clarified its reporting in an
Editor’s Note published to an updated version of the story, saying the latest version of its story has been updated with the full statement.
“The FBI has posted a fuller version of its alert to California authorities, which includes that the information was unverified,” the Editor’s Note states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
said the day before that there weren't any imminent threats to the state, but emergency personnel are prepared should any threats emerge.
President Donald Trump was pressed by reporters on Wednesday about the alert sent to California law enforcement about the threats.
“It's being investigated. But you have a lot of things happening, and all we can do is take them as they come, and the war itself is being prosecuted as well as anybody has ever seen."
Trump also
told reporters he has been briefed on how many Iranian sleeper cells are in the United States and claimed they entered via former President Joe Biden's "open border" policies, but assured Americans under his administration they were all being closely watched.
Meanwhile, Iran’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first statement on the war Thursday, vowing to avenge not just the killings of his father and other leaders by the United States and Israel, but that of every Iranian who has died in this war.
