Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said this week that the U.S. government has "downplayed, if not kept from the public," reports about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
Hawley's comments came shortly after U.S. Air Force officer and former intelligence official David Grusch claimed that the government has found evidence of "non-human" wreckage that has been concealed from the public.
"The number of these is apparently huge," Hawley said on NewsNation. "And that is something that the government has, the best I can say about it, downplayed, if not kept from the public, for a long, long time."
Hawley said he can't "evaluate" Grusch's claims, but said that some details "sound plausible."
"I don't have any basis to evaluate them, but do some of the details that he's alleging, do they sound plausible? Yeah, sure. They sound plausible, based on what I've seen this government do in other instances," Hawley said.
Hawley later said Grusch is "saying that the government knows more about this than they have previously let on. That doesn't really surprise me. Because it looks to me like the government has been tracking these UAPs for a long time now, and has not been saying much about it."
Hawley also said: "What we learned from the Chinese spy balloon incident is that one part of the government actively concealed it from other parts of the government. Because that's what they do all the time."