House

Burchett says he’s seen UFO videos that ‘defy any reason’

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by Max Rego - 04/22/26 9:56 AM ET

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by Max Rego - 04/22/26 9:56 AM ET

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Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday again added to the chorus of lawmakers raising questions about potential sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFO), days after President Trump teased a release of government files on the topic.

“These people are seeing something out there,” Burchett told host Elizabeth Vargas on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” referring to sightings of UFOs.

“I’ve seen pictures and video of things that defy any reason that we have, and everybody says, ‘Well, it’s our stuff, it’s the Russians, it’s the Chinese,’” he added. “If it’s the Chinese, ma’am, they would own us. If it was the Russians, they wouldn’t be bogged down in Ukraine.

“If it was ours, we would never risk our military fighting men and women in half-a-billion-dollar aircraft out with these things that they’re spotting. These things can hover for hours on end, then they can just shoot straight up, they can do angles.”

The Tennessee Republican then recalled a discussion he had with an admiral who told him about an aircraft they saw on sonar that was “almost as big as a football field” and “traveling over 200 miles an hour” underwater.

“We don’t have anything of that capability or that size,” Burchett said.

On Friday, Trump said at a Turning Point USA event that the “first releases” of documents on the matter “will begin very, very soon.”

The president directed the Department of Defense in February to release files “related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.”

That came after former President Obama told liberal commentator Brian Tyler Cohen that aliens are “real,” but noted that the U.S. government is not hiding any. He later clarified that he made those comments based on the size of the universe, but Trump countered that the former president revealed classified information.

On Tuesday, Burchett reiterated his call for the federal government to release the relevant files to the public.

“Just put it out there and let people decide,” he told Vargas. “I have my own theories about what it is, but I would hope that America could handle [it]. I think they can handle it, I just don’t think that our government and their arrogance is — it’s power, it’s about control and it’s arrogance. It’s everything that runs Washington, D.C., ma’am.”

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