Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) suggested Wednesday that the unidentified objects spotted flying in New Jersey and New York could pose a national security risk from China.
The mysterious aerial vehicles, which the FBI is investigating, have been described as resembling small car-sized drones and have been flying over a New Jersey military installation, as well as President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster private golf resort. Residents across multiple New Jersey counties have been reporting them in nightly sightings since the middle of November. More recently, people have reported seeing them flying over New York.
Krishnamoorthi, who is the top lawmaker on the congressional committee on relations between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, agreed during a NewsNation interview that China could be “nefariously” conducting the activity.
“It’s a nontrivial chance,” he said. “It’s definitely a possibility and the likelihood that they can then access data that is collected by these drones is very high.”
Although the Department of Defense has dismissed his worries, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) has also warned the objects could be from Iran and ridiculed the Pentagon’s investigation into the situation as “incredibly stupid.”
Lawmakers’ concerns about the unidentified objects have grown since they first appeared around Nov. 18. They flew over sensitive military and infrastructural areas, including Picatinny Arsenal and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
New Jersey state and law enforcement officials, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI have been coordinating efforts to investigate the “drones” since early December.
A congressional hearing that investigated the situation on Tuesday largely failed to provide any insight into the mysterious objects, invoking criticism from lawmakers who asked why authorities have not shot down the “drones” or determined where they are coming from.
Noting that “these things have been flying over New York and New Jersey, over military installations,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) asked during the hearing: “What if they were carrying chemical weapons or something?”
Robert Wheeler Jr., the assistant director of the FBI’s critical incident response group, responded to Malliotakis’s question by acknowledging that the unidentified flying objects could potentially pose a variety of threats.
“I am cognizant, and we all are in the FBI, of what this threat can look like,” he said. “Anywhere across the spectrum of sophisticated state actors, adversaries that want to hurt us, all the way through counterterrorism matters, cyber, WMD, criminal, all the way down to a nuisance drone that could cause harm.”
After the congressional hearing failed to bring clarity on the situation, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) suggested that the Department of Defense is withholding information about the “drones” and called for the resignation of top officials if they “actually don’t know.”
It’s a slap in the face that the Pentagon continues to tell the American people they don’t know who is flying the drones over New Jersey.
I think the Pentagon absolutely knows, but they’re full of crap.
And if they actually don’t know, these officials should resign in disgrace.… pic.twitter.com/48jM7jAuxw
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) December 12, 2024
Meanwhile, New Jersey Republican state Sen. Jon Bramnick has supported a limited state of emergency banning all drones and called for the unidentified objects to be grounded until authorities determine what exactly they are.
“Our military doesn’t have an answer,” he said during a Fox News interview Wednesday. “If the federal government doesn’t have an answer, we should all be worried if our military has no clue what drones the size of cars are flying around New Jersey.”
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While officials have yet to release details on what the unidentified flying objects are, Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) has warned that they appear to be “very sophisticated” and urged residents to take them “deadly seriously.”
Washington Township Mayor Matt Murello, who oversees an area where many of the phenomena have been spotted, said earlier this month that while he has seen recreational drones in his county, “these don’t appear to be that.”
