ISTANBUL

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has directed federal agencies to declassify and release government records pertaining to extraterrestrial life and other unexplained aerial phenomena.

“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Trump claimed earlier Thursday that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, made classified information public when he confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

"He gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that," he told reporters on Air Force One. "He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it."

Trump said he "may get him out of trouble by declassifying" the information. It was unclear what information he was referring to when he alleged that Obama disclosed classified materials.

Interest in extraterrestrial life has grown in recent days after Obama said during a conversation with American podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen that aliens “are real.”

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” he said on the podcast published Saturday, answering a question about extraterrestrials.

“They’re not being kept in Area 51; there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.

Obama released a subsequent statement on the US social media platform Instagram in which he said he “was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round.”

“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” he said. “But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”

Area 51 is a highly classified US Air Force facility situated at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. While it has long been the subject of conspiracy theories involving extraterrestrials, its only officially acknowledged function is aircraft testing.