CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) believes the Pentagon knows more than what they’re saying following the latest secret briefings on UFOs.

“There’s an arrogance in government at that level that we cannot handle what’s going on out there,” Burchett said Monday as a guest of News Nation’s “On Balance with Leland Vittert.” “It’s a bogus cover-up. It doesn’t fit and it’s about power and control,” he continued.

Burchett has joined lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seeking to apply pressure on members of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees after disappointment in their latest data collection efforts.

Aides for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) gave statements to Politico on Monday, expressing their senators’ frustrations, reporting they’d hoped Capitol Hill was “prepared to address this issue.”

None of the expressions of frustration, however, were stronger than those of Burchertt, who did not use an aide to express his feelings.

“I don’t trust the Department of Defense to get this right since leadership there has always been part of a cover-up,” Burchett said.

Burchett is a member of the House Transportation Aviation subcommittee and represents a district where there have been numerous reports of UFO sightings.

“It is clear from the public evidence that we don’t have full control of our airspace. That’s a national security issue and it’s also unacceptable,” he added.  

The briefings follow the National Defense Authorization Act, which required the Pentagon to create the Anomaly Surveillance and Resolution Office that has the authority to pursue “any resource, capability, asset, or process” to investigate “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Singed into law by President Joe Biden, the bill also requires the Pentagon to develop an “intelligence collection and analysis plan to gain as much knowledge as possible regarding the technical and operational characteristics, origins, and intentions of unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Instead of dedicating more resources and personnel to the task, however, Burchett is of the mind that we’ve seen enough.

“We take the shackles off,” the senator told the program Monday night when asked what should be done.

“We we put pressure on the Pentagon — on funding and everything else — and say enough is enough, bring forth what you got and let the American public decide. I trust the American public. Release it all,” he continued.

Just this past April, the Pentagon released a report saying those who witnessed and reported UFO sightings also experienced injuries including radiation burns, brain problems and damaged nerves.

Similarly, in 2019, the U.S. government declassified, released and confirmed videos showing encounters between UFOs and U.S. Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015. Similarly, leaked Pentagon footage of a spherical object seen flying off the coast of San Diego was later confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon, as well.

“It’s not a tinfoil hat thing anymore,” Burchett said Monday. “You’ve gotten a pilot describing something that has been described for decades since Roswell, New Mexico.”

Burchett went on to reveal to the program that he has information that the Russians and the Chinese have similar information, have seen these very same things and that they are investigating them, just like the U.S.

“It’s at a little higher level than I believe we’re being told,” he told Vittert,

“The government is part of the cover-up and they’re not going to disclose it to us because they don’t trust us with with having enough sense to diagnose. It’s very frustrating,” he said.