Congressman has grim take after access to UFO footage: 'We can't handle it'

A Tennessee lawmaker issued a dire warning after claiming to have seen classified UFO footage that hasn't been released to the public.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., speculated extraterrestrial life forms could have technology that humanity "can't handle" during an appearance on the "Event Horizon" podcast. 

"If they’re out there, they’re out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette," Burchett said.

"And if they can travel light years or at the speeds that we’ve seen, and physics as we know it, fly underwater, don't show a heat trail, things like that, then we are vastly out of our league."

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Burchett is a sitting member on the House Oversight Committee, which has held hearings about potential threats of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), a government-derived term for UFOs.

"We can’t handle it," Burchett said during his podcast appearance about potential alien tech. "We couldn't fight them off if we wanted to. That's why I don't think they're a threat to us, or they would already have been."

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His startling comments came after whistleblower David Grusch, a decorated Air Force veteran who is considered by many to be credible, came forward with claims the government has been running a secret UFO retrieval program.

The House Oversight Committee is preparing a hearing to discuss Grusch's unverified claims. Burchett and fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida will lead the committee's investigation.

Susan Gough, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense, told Fox News Digital in a previous email June 6 there is no "verifiable information to substantiate the claims."

Since Grusch's shocking claims, other "high-level" government whistleblowers with "high clearances" have come forward and backed Grush's claims, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told NewsNation in an interview at the end of June.

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"We’re trying to gather as much of that information as we can… And, frankly, a lot of them are very fearful of their jobs… fearful of harm coming to them," Rubio said during the interview.

While he didn't comment on whether he thinks the claims are credible, Rubio said, "What I think we owe is just a mature, you know, understanding, listening and trying to put all these pieces together and just sort of intake the information without any prejudgment or jumping to any conclusions."

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The same week as Rubio's interview, the Senate approved new language in the Intelligence Authorization Act to further transparency and investigative efforts and protect whistleblowers.

Any employee under contract that "has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the" government relating to UAP has 60 days to notify Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the updated language says. 

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Kirkpatrick is the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is a specialized department within the Pentagon that investigates UFOs. 

His office is investigating over 800 cases of UAP, but only 2%-5% of the cases are "truly anomalous."

NASA is also investigating UFOs, which is running on a separate but parallel track as AARO. 

Both NASA and AARO are expected to release separate reports this summer.