WASHINGTON — In response to growing public curiosity, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he has instructed the Pentagon and various government agencies to disclose files concerning extraterrestrials and UFOs.

Trump’s revelation came shortly after he criticized former President Barack Obama for allegedly leaking “classified information.” This accusation followed Obama’s recent podcast comments suggesting the existence of aliens.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump remarked, “I’m not sure about their existence,” adding humorously about Obama, “I might help him out by declassifying.”

Later that evening, Trump took to his social media platform to declare his directive, stating that agencies should release documents related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), as well as any other relevant information on these complex and intriguing subjects.”

In his podcast appearance earlier, Obama clarified that while he hasn’t seen evidence of aliens contacting Earth, he believes that given the vastness of the universe, it’s statistically likely that life exists elsewhere.

When questioned about the possibility of alien visitors, Trump maintained a neutral stance, saying, “I don’t have an opinion on it. I never discuss it. But many people do, and they strongly believe in it.”

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump suggested this week that he was ready to speak about it, however, when she said on a podcast that the president had a speech prepared to deliver on aliens that he would give at the “right time.”

That was news to the White House. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded with a laugh when she was asked about it Wednesday and told reporters, “A speech on aliens would be news to me.”

Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life remerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unknown objects to The New York Times and Politico in 2017. The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a Navy ship, were likely drones.

Since then the Pentagon has promised more transparency on the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.

In 2023, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of AARO at the time, told reporters he didn’t have any evidence “of any program having ever existed as a to do any sort of reverse engineering of any sort of extraterrestrial (unidentified aerial phenomena).”

The information that has been made public shows that the vast majority of UFO reports made by the military go unsolved but the ones that are identified are largely benign in nature.

An 18-page unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 said service members had made 485 reports of unidentified phenomena in the past year but 118 cases were found to be “prosaic objects such as various types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems.”

“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology,” the report stressed.

Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.