President Donald Trump told a packed megachurch in Phoenix on Friday that he has directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to release classified government files on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena, and that the first batch of documents will reach the public imminently.
"We found many very interesting documents, I must say. And the first releases will begin very, very soon," Trump told the Turning Point USA crowd. "So you can go out and see if that phenomena is correct. You'll figure it out. Let me know."
The announcement marks the most concrete update yet on an initiative Trump first teased in February, when he posted on Truth Social that he would order Hegseth and other agencies to begin identifying and releasing files related to "alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)." What had been a social-media pledge now appears to be an active declassification effort, one that the Pentagon itself says it welcomes.
The trail from promise to action runs through several months of escalating federal activity. In February, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was directing the "Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies" to start the release process, citing "the tremendous interest shown" by the public. The New York Post reported that Trump discussed the matter directly with Hegseth, tying the move to growing federal and public demand for UAP transparency.
Hegseth responded publicly, telling reporters that his department was "digging in" to the files and would be in "full compliance" with the president's orders. Newsmax reported that Hegseth did not provide a specific timeline for the release but confirmed the Department of Defense was actively working on compliance. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said declassified records would eventually be posted on the National Archives website.
A War Department official confirmed to the Daily Mail that the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, AARO, is now working with the White House to consolidate existing UAP records collections and transfer them to the National Archives.
"Since the office was established, AARO has made progress to make UAP information available and transfer those records to the National Archives in accordance with federal law. We welcome the president's initiative to supercharge these efforts and make more UAP information available to the public as soon as possible."
That statement from an unnamed War Department official is notable for its tone. Federal bureaucracies rarely "welcome" a president's push for transparency. It suggests the institutional resistance that has long surrounded UAP files may be softening, or at least that officials recognize which way the political wind is blowing.
Trump is not acting alone. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's Task Force sent Hegseth a letter in March requesting more than 45 video files related to UAPs, with a deadline of April 14. The requested footage dates back to 2019 and reportedly includes clips of "cigar-shaped" and "spherical" objects, material connected to a 2023 shootdown over Lake Huron, and UAP formations captured near Iran, Syria, and the Persian Gulf.
The task force did not mince words about the stakes. House representatives wrote that "the lack of disclosure regarding the very real threat posed by UAPs in and around US restricted airspace is concerning" and that "the presence of UAPs in and around the sensitive airspaces of US military installations poses a threat to the security of the armed forces and their readiness."
That language, focused squarely on national security, not science fiction, reflects a shift in how elected officials talk about UAPs. This is no longer fringe territory. Members of Congress are treating unexplained objects near military bases as a readiness problem, and they want the Pentagon to hand over the evidence. The administration's willingness to reshape Pentagon priorities extends, it seems, to what the public is allowed to know.
The task force also held hearings in September at which whistleblowers testified that AARO possessed video records of UAPs. That testimony added fuel to demands for disclosure and gave Trump a bipartisan opening to act.
The federal government's relationship with UFO files stretches back more than half a century. Starting in 1974, the US Air Force ran Project Blue Book, which cataloged over 12,000 UFO sightings before concluding in 1969 that there was no evidence of UFOs from other planets. The subject went largely dormant in official Washington until Senator Harry Reid took an interest in 1995 and later pushed the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in 2007.
Public attention surged again after leaked military video from 2012 showed three orbs flying over the Persian Gulf, and after Navy pilots reported a near-collision with unidentified craft off the Florida coast in 2014. Those incidents, and others like them, helped move UAPs from late-night cable television into congressional hearing rooms.
Yet official findings have repeatedly come up empty. In 2022, senior defense officials at AARO announced they had found no evidence that aliens had ever visited Earth. A follow-up AARO report in 2024 concluded that most UFO sightings were misidentified ordinary objects and that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial technology since the end of World War II. Just The News noted the 2024 report found more sightings but still no proof of extraterrestrial origin.
Those findings raise a fair question: if there is nothing to see, why has it taken decades and a presidential order to get the files into public view? The gap between official denials and official secrecy is exactly the kind of contradiction that erodes trust in government institutions. Taxpayers fund the Pentagon. They have a right to know what their military has recorded in its own airspace.
At the Phoenix event, Trump also took aim at former President Barack Obama over his past comments on UFOs. Obama had said during a podcast interview that UFOs are "real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in... Area 51." Obama added: "There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."
Trump said Obama "took it out of classified information" and added bluntly: "He's not supposed to be doing that." The remark drew a line between Trump's formal declassification process and what he characterized as Obama's casual handling of sensitive material, a contrast this administration is clearly happy to draw. The broader pattern of Trump asserting executive authority over entrenched federal institutions continues here, this time aimed at the intelligence and defense apparatus that has long guarded UAP information.
For all the momentum, significant questions remain. It is still unclear exactly which files Trump was referring to when he said releases would begin "very, very soon." The Daily Mail noted that the specific documents remain unidentified. No firm date has been set. And the scope of the release, whether it will include the 45-plus video files Congress requested, or something narrower, has not been spelled out.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has separately signaled the administration's interest in related mysteries. She wrote on X that the White House is "actively working with all relevant agencies and the FBI to holistically review" cases involving missing scientists, citing "President Trump's commitment to the truth." Whether that review connects to the UAP file release or runs on a parallel track is another open question.
Fox News reported that Trump's push fits into a broader federal transparency effort on unidentified aerial phenomena, including the 2023 Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act and AARO's existing mandate. The legislative and executive branches appear, for once, to be pulling in the same direction on disclosure.
The administration's willingness to challenge long-standing institutional secrecy mirrors its approach in other areas, from national security decision-making to Pentagon personnel decisions. The common thread is a president who believes the public deserves answers that previous administrations were content to lock away.
Whether those files contain anything that changes what we know about the skies above us remains to be seen. But after decades of official silence, the American people are about to find out, and that alone is long overdue.
