Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., earlier this week urged lawmakers to take UFOs more seriously and said aliens have technology that could "turn us into charcoal briquette."
"They [extraterrestrial craft] can travel light years or at the speeds that we've seen defy physics as we know it," Burchett, who sits on the House Oversight Committee overseeing UFO hearings, said during an appearance on the "Event Horizon" podcast earlier this week.
"They can fly underwater and don't show a heat trail.
"We are out of our league," the congressman added. "We couldn't fight them off what we wanted to. That's why I don't think they're a threat to us, or they would already have been."
Burchett said Americans have been dealing [with government cover-ups] "since 1947, probably since about 1897 in what was the Aurora, Texas, 'UFO crash,'" and explained that if aliens have this technology, then "they could turn us into a charcoal briquette."
Burchett told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the committee plans to hold a hearing on UFOs but would not divulge any information on dates and witnesses, adding that when the witness list is published, "you'll see the naysayers try to discredit them as they've done with me."
He also said he believes claims by a whistleblower former intelligence official that the government has possession of "intact and partially intact" alien vehicles.
David Charles Grusch, a 36-year-old decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan who led analysis of unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP) within a Department of Defense agency, told The Debrief recently that government officials retaliated against him when he turned over classified information about the vehicles to Congress.
During the podcast, Burchett also called on the federal government to "just turn loose the reports, quit with the redacted reports that look like Swiss cheese with everything whited out or blacked out, and just give us all the information and let the American public decide."
"We can handle it. Stop with the arrogance. Stop with the corruption," he added. "Let's get it all out there."