'The devil has been in our way': GOP lawmaker accuses Biden admin of covering up UFOs

A Republican congressman on Wednesday accused the Pentagon and the intelligence community of hiding what the government knows about UFOs, saying “the devil has been in our way.”

During a House Oversight subcommittee hearing on the issue, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said the government’s lack of transparency surrounding “unidentified aerial phenomena” amounts to a “coverup.”

“The devil has been in our way through this thing. We've run into roadblocks from members from the intelligence community, the Pentagon,” said Burchett, who has been the subcommittee’s most vocal advocate for investigating UFOs.

Burchett cited an example of when he proposed an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration that would have made pilot reports of UFOs available to Congress, but the bill was never advanced.

The amendment, he said, would have required the FAA to report sightings by commercial pilots to Congress.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.), chair of the panel’s national security subcommittee, also accused the Biden administration of not being transparent on the subject of UFOs, citing the Chinese spy balloon incident in February.

“We are not just debating the existence of UAPs. We’re deliberating on the principles that define our republic, which is a commitment to transparency and accountability,” he said.

Lawmakers didn’t provide many concrete examples of a Biden administration cover-up, and instead criticized the Pentagon for overclassifying information and raising what they viewed as a lack of information over the spy balloon incident multiple times.

Though several questions early in the hearing revolved around the possible existence of extraterrestrial activity, witnesses and lawmakers emphasized the importance of investigating UFOs as a national security matter. Rather than spaceships operated by aliens, unidentified craft could be drones or aircraft operated by adversaries.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, stressed the need for bipartisanship on the issue, which has struggled to achieve credibility among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Rather than dismiss claims, Republicans and Democrats must work together to “cut through misinformation and to look at the facts in a serious and thoughtful manner,” he said.

Congress held its first public hearing on UFOs in decades last year, with Pentagon officials speaking before lawmakers. Wednesday’s hearing was the first public, unclassified testimony from witnesses who have reported sightings.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot and current executive director for Americans for Safe Aerospace, testified Wednesday alongside David Grusch, who made public claims about a secretive government UFO retrieval program, and David Fravor, a former Navy pilot who, like Graves, claimed to have spotted unidentified aircraft.

While Burchett and others have called for more transparency, other lawmakers have scoffed at any notion that there are aliens hiding in the Pentagon’s basement. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, when asked two weeks ago if he believed in aliens, provided a tongue-in-cheek response: “I think if we had found a UFO, I think the Department of Defense would tell us because they probably want to request more money.”

It’s been a hot-button issue as witnesses and congressional advocates for increased transparency plead for lawmakers and the public to take the matter seriously, despite the pushback.

“Today is just the start of it, it’s not the ending,” Burchett told Fox News before the hearing.