WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump said he will direct federal agencies to start identifying and releasing government records related to extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
He made the announcement on Thursday after former President Barack Obama recently made comments about the existence of aliens.
In a statement shared on Truth Social, Trump said the decision was driven by “tremendous interest” from the public and would involve instructing Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth and “other relevant departments and agencies” to initiate the process.
The review would encompass files tied to alleged alien life, UAPs — the Pentagon’s formal term for unexplained aerial sightings — and “any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters,” Trump wrote.
Federal interest in UAPs has intensified in recent years. The Pentagon established dedicated offices to analyze unidentified aerial sightings, and Congress has held hearings on military encounters with unexplained objects.
While officials have acknowledged some sightings remain unexplained, the Department of War has repeatedly said there is no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
It remains unclear how quickly records could be released or how broadly the directive would apply across agencies. Past disclosure efforts have involved declassification reviews to determine whether material can be made public without compromising national security.
The announcement signals a potential expansion of federal transparency efforts related to one of the government’s most scrutinized and debated topics.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama previously told political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen after Cohen asked him if aliens were real during a recent podcast.
Obama later clarified the comments. He took to social media on Sunday to explain that that he was trying to “stick with the spirit” of Cohen, who questioned him about a variety of topics amid the podcast.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” the former president wrote on Instagram. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The National News Desk’s Ray Lewis contributed to this report.
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