Trump says Pentagon review found new alien documents, releases coming soon

Donald Trump said the Pentagon’s review of UFO-related files had turned up “many very interesting documents,” and he said the first releases would begin “very, very soon” during an April 17 appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona.

The promise lands in the middle of a debate that has stretched across administrations and Congress: how much the government actually knows about unidentified anomalous phenomena, and how much it has kept from the public. Trump said in February that he directed the Department of Defense to begin reviewing government files related to extraterrestrial life, but he also has said he has not seen evidence of aliens and remains uncertain about their existence.

The Pentagon’s main UAP office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, was created in July 2022 as the department’s focal point for unidentified anomalous phenomena. In its FY2024 consolidated annual report, AARO said it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology. A separate 2024 historical report said it found no empirical evidence for claims that the U.S. government or private companies had been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.

That official skepticism has not ended the pressure for disclosure. The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities held a hearing on AARO on November 19, 2024, with AARO director Dr. Jon Kosloski testifying before lawmakers. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been among the strongest voices in Congress arguing for greater transparency on UAPs, while the Pentagon has said many sightings turn out to be ordinary objects or natural phenomena.

The next release, if it arrives as Trump described, will be watched less as a revelation about alien life than as a test of government accountability. For decades, vague explanations and scattered disclosures have fed a cycle of suspicion around unexplained sightings. A clearer accounting of what the Defense Department has found, what it has withheld, and what it still cannot explain would do more to rebuild public trust than another burst of mystery.