Trump, Schumer find rare common ground on releasing UFO files

Their newfound unity on the subject conjoins a passion of Schumer's and a moment of expedience for Trump.

The timeline for release of the documents and the breadth and scope of materials that could become public were unclear, but chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital in a statement, "The Department looks forward to working with the interagency to fulfill the President's directive."

For Schumer, it's a passion project years in the making.

Seeking more transparency on UFOs and UAPs is a torch Schumer picked up from the late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a friend and mentor of the current top Senate Democrat. It's also an issue he has prodded Trump to take up since last year.

"Now do UFOs," Schumer said in response to Trump ordering files related to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to be declassified.

Reid gave the quest to unveil secrets surrounding UFOs and UAPs legitimacy in the late 2000s when he played a key role in funding the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. That public program received millions to investigate unexplained phenomena.

He and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., introduced legislation modeled after the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

That bill, meant to be an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would have created a review board at the National Archives and Records Administration to collect the government's trove of documents on UFOs and UAPs and established a presumption of disclosure for the records, requiring the government to provide a compelling reason why they shouldn't be released to the public.

Ultimately, their original version did not pass muster, and a more watered-down iteration of the bill became law - an outcome Schumer blasted as an "outrage" at the time.

"It means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades," Schumer said.