A helicopter chased away a drone near Donald Trump‘s New Jersey golf course on Sunday morning, the state’s former governor said.
Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday, Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who served as governor in the 1990s, said the government’s “we don’t know” was not a satisfying answer.
“Well, everybody’s talking about them right now,” Whitman said. “I live in Hunterdon County, where this morning there was a helicopter that chased a drone away from Trump’s national golf course [Bedminster] which is next door to the farm. They’re there, but I think also you see a lot of sightings that are small planes that sometimes will look as if it’s hovering over you, the plane, because it’s coming at you. That makes it look as if it’s stationary.
“I don’t think we have to worry, but what’s frustrating is to have the government say well, there’s no problem. We don’t know what it is, but it’s no problem. That’s not a satisfying answer. We need better from the government.”
Newsweek contacted Whitman and the FBI via email, as well as the Trump Bedminster Golf Club via an online form for comment.
Despite the FBI receiving thousands of reports from the public since the sightings began in November, a spokesperson for the bureau told Congress on Tuesday that “we don’t know” who is behind them, even though multiple drones have been sighted flying near sensitive military sites.
On Saturday, an airport in New York was shut down for an hour after drone activity blocked its airspace.
The lack of answers has led some lawmakers to accuse government agencies of concealing information, and several theories about what the drones could be have been proposed.
The gap in information has left a void, being filled with rampant speculation, including conspiracy theories.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday suggested that a rule change by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in September of 2023 “may be one of the reasons” for the reports of drone sightings at night in the northeast of the country.
“In September of 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, changed the rules so that drones could fly at night,” the Biden administration official told ABC News’ This Week on Sunday. “And that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn to dusk.”
Mayorkas acknowledged that “there’s no question that drones are being sighted.” The Biden admin official noted that “thousands” are flying in the United States every day, and that “more than one million drones” are registered nationwide.
“I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings,” he said in the interview.
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