Months after the appearance of multiple drones sparked conspiracy theories and rumors across the US, Donald Trump has offered an explanation for the mysterious flying objects.
The White House press secretary shared an explanation for the drones after Trump returned to the White House following his inauguration on January 20, after which he set about laying down laws and seeking to share information for his supporters.
The president has already signed an order related to declassifying files about the assassinations of former president John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., and his administration has now directly addressed another conspiracy.
When did the drones first appear?
Though drones used for filming and recreation have been around for some time now, residents in the US began to become concerned shortly before Thanksgiving last year when several large drones were spotted in New Jersey.
The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey said at the time that federal and state law enforcement partners would ‘investigate’ the drone activity, leading to fears that they weren’t related to a US authority.
Sightings continued in the following weeks, and later spread to Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York.
What has Trump said about the drones?
Since Trump was not in power when the drones first appeared, he initially criticized the government for failing to explain the drones.
In a post on his Truth Social social media page, he wrote: “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”
Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the drones in the first press briefing of Trump’s second term, and claimed that many of the devices were in fact being overseen by authorities.
What were the drones doing?
Leavitt told the crowd that she was sharing the news ‘directly from the president of the United States’.
Saying the ‘update on the New Jersey drones’ had come from Trump in the Oval Office, Leavitt went on to reveal that the drones were deployed in part for ‘research’.
She said: “After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons.”
In addition to the drones being flown by the Federal Aviation Administration, Leavitt said: “Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones. In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy.”
What were the theories about the drones?
Social media users and experts all weighed in on the drones, with theories ranging from aliens to foreign countries scouting for information.
Retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson suggested the drones could be gathering mobile phone data, while former CIA operations officer Laura Ballman claimed it could be ‘a classified exercise to test either evasion technology or detection technology in urban areas’.
