DC lawmakers frustrated as officials reject drone conspiracies – but provide no real answers

The rash of mysterious drone sightings across New Jersey continues to cause panic down the US east coast — and on Capitol Hill, frustrations are bubbling.

Joe Biden’s administration, with just over one month left in office, is heading into the holiday season in full lame-duck mode. As rumors of a ceasefire in Gaza being “close” raise the hopes of some Democrats eager to see the president pull out a final legacy-defining win, more are becoming vocal about the failure of the broader administration to address what is quickly becoming a source of serious misinformation.

The kicker came Monday as state senator Doug Mastriano of Pennsylania, who ran for governor unsuccessfully in 2022, posted an image of a replica “Tie Fighter” from the Star Wars franchise being hauled on the back of a flatbed truck, with another unknown social media user’s caption claiming it to have been “recovered” from “Orange Beach” — a city in Alabama.

Despite his own furiously-added caption accusing the federal government of “fecklessness” on the issue, Mastriano would go on to claim in a separate post on Tuesday that he knew he was posting a fake image.

But whether Mastriano was really fooled or not, a lot of other people certainly are. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing conspiracist congresswoman from Georgia, believes the feds are behind it. A number of other politicians, such as senator-elect Andy Kim of New Jersey, have turned to amateur drone-spotting, which also allows for a few quick poses with the local police.

New Jersey’s own Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who turned to the GOP during the first Trump era, had the wildest take of all. He declared on Fox News: “Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones.”

Numerous agency officials, including most prominently DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have come out to discourage fears and tamp down on conspiracies. A press call took place on Saturday which involved senior FBI, DHS and FAA officials stressed repeatedly that the government has no evidence pointing to foreign or criminal involvement. Some sightings have been outright dismissed as hoaxes and cases of mistaken identification. Others, officials have noted, could be commercial or privately-owned drones, both of which are legal in the US.

"We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones,” a joint statement from those agencies on Monday read. Other examples of mistaken sightings included “manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones", according to the statement.

But one thing every one of these politicians (and there are many other examples of this) has in common: they are filling an information void being created by the federal government, which despite numerous statements from involved agencies like the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and FAA has not actually come up with a specific explanation — publicly — for sightings that have caused emergency shutdowns of airspace around a critical military installation in Dayton, Ohio, and a commercial airport in New York this past week.

open image in gallery

And that’s where the anger is beginning to grow in Washington, as the president’s typical defenders say his officials need to provide more clarity and specificity about those incidents.

State leaders, too, are growing annoyed: "This has gone too far," declared New York’s Kathy Hochul.

The House’s permanent select committee for Intelligence met on Tuesday for a classified briefing on the matter.

“There are a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” Jim Himes, the top Democrat on that committee, told Fox this weekend.

“People will fill a vacuum with their fears and anxieties,” Himes said, before taking aim at Van Drew’s wild tale: “Oh my god, there’s an Iranian mothership hovering off the coast of Asbury Park!”

open image in gallery

And where’s Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? That’s another question on the minds of these Democrats, even if they aren’t saying it outright.

NBC’s Seth Meyers needled the president on it Monday night: “President Biden addressed the drone issue today — I’m just f***ing with you. He was nowhere to be seen.”

That sort of gets to the heart of the problem now in Washington, where the president’s party is confronted with a White House seemingly unable to shake off the malaise caused by the vice president’s shattering election loss to Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the party is expected to have to bail out the GOP again later this week. House Republicans emerged from their own caucus meeting this morning unable to find common ground over the passage of another CR — a short-term continuing resolution necessary to avert a partial government shutdown. Congress faces a funding deadline on Friday, while Speaker Mike Johnson faces the prospect of fighting off a rebellion from within his caucus yet again.