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The Mr. President Campaign: UAP Whistleblowers Film a Direct Appeal to Donald Trump (10 August 2026)

Washington, D.C. · 10 August 2026 · Disclosure and Policy · United States

The opening frame of the Mr. President campaign film: Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee speaking at a lectern bearing the House Oversight seal and a Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets placard, with Rep. Scott Perry at left and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna at right. This is archival press-conference footage recycled into the film, not new material, and the campaign's own caption identifying Burchett is burned into the picture. No imagery of any craft or occupant appears anywhere in the film or on this page. (Still frame from the Mr. President campaign film, published on X on 10 August 2026. The film credits Submersive Media and 42West and was spearheaded by James Fox with consultation by Leslie Kean and David Grusch.)

Five named men, four of them former federal personnel and one of them a sitting member of Congress, appear in a one minute forty nine second film asking President Trump to grant immunity so that they can speak to the public rather than only to the government. The film is a verifiable fact. Everything claimed inside it remains a claim.

What happened

On the evening of 10 August 2026 a short film titled by its own closing card as an appeal to the President was published on X. It runs one minute and forty nine seconds, it is cut from forty separate shots, and it carries no narrator. James Fox announced it the same night in a post that reads, verbatim, "UFO/UAP Whistleblowers Unite with Direct Plea to President Trump! If you want UAP disclosure please help spread this message! - For lawful and immediate PUBLIC disclosure of basic facts not impacting national security - Spearheaded by James Fox with consultation by Leslie Kean and David Grusch - In cooperation with the firms Submersive Media and 42west."

The film opens on archival footage of a Capitol press conference. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee stands at a lectern bearing the seal of the House Committee on Oversight and a placard reading Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, and he says, "This is a cover-up. You all know it. We know it. We demand the answers." Rep. Scott Perry, captioned as a former Brigadier General of the US Army National Guard, follows with, "This is our government. This is our country. This is our information. And damn it, we demand it." That opening is not new material. It is recycled press-conference footage, and the archive could not establish which gathering it comes from beyond the placard on the lectern.

The body of the film is five direct-to-camera pieces, each introduced by a lower third. Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri Republican, UAP Caucus. David Grusch, former SIO at the NGA. Jeffrey Nuccetelli, former USAF security forces member. Dylan Borland, former Geospatial Intelligence Analyst. Matthew Brown, Intelligence Analyst, Department of War and Department of State. Over Brown's introduction the picture cuts to a printed page of the Immaculate Constellation report, with the words IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION highlighted in yellow beneath the heading Unacknowledged Special Access Program.

The editing relays single sentences across several speakers, which makes attribution a real problem rather than a formality. The archive downloaded the film, mapped its shot boundaries to the hundredth of a second, and matched a machine transcript of a rebroadcast against whoever was on screen at each moment. On that alignment Burlison says, "We continue to receive credible claims of recovered craft of non-human origin and reverse engineering programs", and Grusch completes the sentence with, "photographs and videos of these operations to include the craft and the non-human occupants." Borland says, "I can tell you with certainty that I provided evidence of current operations." Grusch says, "And I've seen this evidence with my own eyes, and I've had these discussions with our nation's most senior leaders in a classified environment." Brown says, "The American people and Congress have not heard the whole truth. But secrecy agreements and active threats prevent me from speaking freely." Nuccetelli says, "I personally know current and former government employees who possess critical first-hand information but remain silent because they fear losing their careers, their pensions, or facing serious legal jeopardy." All five then say the words Mr. President in a rapid montage, Burlison asks the President to "Provide immunity for anyone and everyone who has already come forward and for those who will come forward", and Grusch closes with, "Mr. President, give us the authorization and we're ready to go." The final card reads: "IT'S YOUR MOVE, MR. PRESIDENT. YOU ALONE CAN RELEASE THIS INFORMATION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE."

That transcript is a machine reading checked against the picture, not an official one. It rendered Nuccetelli's name as Newstatelli, so small wording errors are possible and the film is the document, not this page.

The push ran through 12 August. Leslie Kean posted, verbatim, "I'm proud to have worked on this "Mr. President" campaign with James Fox and David Grusch. Rep. Eric Burlison was also very helpful. Let's get the President's ear and inspire him to allow Grusch and others to provide more information to the public. We are grateful for what he has already done, unique in history. Please spread the video far and wide so it becomes impossible for the president's team to ignore it!" Jeremy Corbell, who is not in the film, posted his own reading of it later that day: "Excellent move to make this direct appeal. Like I've said many times - there is an army of whistleblowers (some first-hand) waiting to have a direct dialogue with the American public about the UAP reality", and he added the words "NHI biologics" as something he says is visible in the video. That phrase is Corbell's characterisation and the archive is not adopting it. What the film itself contains, on the archive's own alignment of picture to speech, is Grusch saying the words "the craft and the non-human occupants" inside a sentence about credible claims being received, and no imagery of any craft, body or occupant at any point.

Documents and images

James Fox reposting the campaign film on 12 August 2026 with his own framing of what David Grusch claims in it. View source

Rep. Eric Burlison publishing the administration's preliminary implementation guidance, ODNI memorandum ES 2026-00818, on 1 August 2026. View source

What is the official position?

There is no official response to this campaign. As of the archive's research the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and the Department of War have said nothing about it, no member of the administration has acknowledged it, and no mainstream outlet appears to have covered it. The film spread on X and largely stayed there. Rep. Burlison's own press office, which is the standing intake point for UAP whistleblowers on Capitol Hill, had published nothing about it either, its most recent release being dated 29 July 2026. Silence is not a rebuttal, but it is the state of the record and this page will not imply otherwise.

The policy background is what makes the appeal legible. Since January 2026 the administration has run a declassification programme called PURSUE, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, publishing tranches of records at war.gov/UFO on 8 May, 22 May, 12 June, 10 July and 7 August 2026. The fifth tranche carried forty one records drawn from the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and the Executive Office of the President, and the Department said further files would follow on a rolling basis. That programme releases documents. It does not release people.

The fight the film is actually about is the fight over non-disclosure agreements and immunity. In late July 2026 the President directed the Department of War and the intelligence community to waive prior NDAs signed by people with UAP-relevant information. On 31 July 2026 the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Aaron Lukas, issued implementing guidance numbered ES 2026-00818, and on 1 August Rep. Burlison published it with the administration's authorisation. Read carefully, that memorandum does something much narrower than the headlines suggested. It tells the intelligence community that NDAs no longer bar disclosure to the President, to the PURSUE task force or to AARO, and it requires every IC element to name a PURSUE designee within thirty days. It does not authorise public disclosure of classified information, it does not create a new route to Congress, and it grants no immunity, resting instead on existing anti-retaliation protections in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act. In other words the waiver moves witnesses from silence into a cleared government channel, and nowhere near a microphone.

Burlison had already said as much in writing on 29 July: "Independent congressional oversight is a critical part of UAP disclosure, and we are uncertain whether the abrogation of NDAs will apply to testimony received by Congress before referral to the executive branch." He advised anyone considering the process to bring both an attorney and a member of Congress. His legislative answer is the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, adopted by the House on 22 July 2026 as an amendment to the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which would create a UAP Records Collection at the National Archives and a Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena power. That amendment was still awaiting Senate action. So on 10 August 2026 the honest description of the legal position is this: the documents were moving, the people were not, and the campaign is an attempt to close that specific gap by asking the one official who can close it unilaterally.

What the people involved say

The five men in the film are not anonymous and their records are checkable, which is exactly why the first-hand and second-hand distinction has to be drawn precisely rather than blurred.

David Grusch is a former Air Force intelligence officer and a former senior civilian intelligence official at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He testified under oath to the House Oversight Committee on 26 July 2023, and the printed transcript settles what he did and did not claim. Asked by Rep. Eric Burlison, the same congressman who now appears beside him in this film, whether he had seen the spacecraft, Grusch answered that he had to be careful describing what he had seen firsthand in that setting. Asked whether he had seen any of the bodies, he answered, "That is something I have not witnessed myself." Asked whether the government possesses UAP, he answered, "Absolutely, based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over 4 years." On non-human biologics he was equally specific: "Nonhuman, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program." Grusch is therefore a second-hand witness to the alleged crash retrieval programme and a first-hand witness only to the testimony and material he was shown. Since March 2025 he has also been a paid Special Advisor to Rep. Burlison's office, which readers should know when weighing a film in which the two appear together. When James Fox reposted the film on 12 August he framed it as Grusch claiming "to have seen highly classified videos and photos of recovered UFOs and their nonhuman occupants", and that framing is the one to hold on to, because seeing imagery of a thing is not the same as seeing the thing.

Jeffrey Nuccetelli described himself in written testimony to the House task force on 9 September 2025 as "a former military police officer with sixteen years of active-duty service in the United States Air Force". He is first-hand for one event and second-hand for the rest. The 2003 Vandenberg Red Square was reported by Boeing contractors, and the launch-site incursion later that night was reported to him over the radio by five shaken witnesses he then interviewed. He wrote, "I personally witnessed one of these events and investigated others." His own encounter came in 2005 off duty in his backyard, a pulsing object that he says dropped to roughly two hundred feet above his house.

Dylan Borland is first-hand in the strictest sense. His written testimony describes him as "a former '1N1' geospatial intelligence specialist for the U.S. Air Force in an active duty enlisted capacity from 2010 to 2013", stationed at Langley Air Force Base, where in the summer of 2012 he says he stood beneath a silent equilateral triangle roughly a hundred feet on a side. He is second-hand on the legacy crash retrieval programme, which he says he learned of later through a Special Access Program position. He has testified to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and to AARO, and on 11 August 2026, the day after the film launched, the IC Inspector General warned publicly that unauthorised disclosure of his protected testimony could warrant referral to the FBI.

Matthew Brown is the author of the Immaculate Constellation report, the document shown on screen during his introduction. He is not a witness to any object. He is a former Department of Defense and State Department analyst who says he came across misfiled material on a shared server, could not get it addressed internally, and wrote it up. He has briefed committee staff privately and has never testified in public under oath, which is why his line in the film about secrecy agreements preventing him from speaking freely is the most literal statement in it.

Is the Mr. President Campaign: UAP Whistleblowers Film a Direct Appeal to Donald Trump (10 August 2026) real? The two-pass assessment

Pass one, the deflationary reading, and it is a strong one. This is a professionally produced advocacy film made by people with things to sell. James Fox is a documentary director whose catalogue includes The Phenomenon, Moment of Contact and The Program. Leslie Kean is a journalist with books and a documentary in the field. Jeremy Corbell, who amplified it, has his own documentary in release. The two firms named in the credits are not civic organisations: 42West is an entertainment public relations agency owned by Dolphin Entertainment whose published practice areas run to awards campaigns, talent and crisis communications, and Submersive Media is a digital agency. Neither firm mentions the campaign anywhere on its own website, and no press release exists. The launch was handed to a finance account with 1.7 million followers rather than to a newsroom, and the metrics were the point: roughly 354,000 views on the original, 162,000 on Fox's 12 August repost, 75,000 on Kean's, 51,000 on Corbell's. Fox's repost tagged Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro, Theo Von and several networks by name. That is an influence operation in the ordinary commercial sense of the phrase, timed to ride the momentum of five PURSUE releases, and it routes around the institutions built to evaluate these claims. AARO exists. The intelligence committees exist. The Inspector General channel exists, and Grusch and Borland both used it. Asking the President for a personal dispensation instead is a choice, and a critic is entitled to say it is the choice of people who prefer an audience to an adjudicator. Nor are the underlying claims unchallenged. On Metabunk, Mick West has noted that the Immaculate Constellation document is unsourced and quotes nothing, and that a photograph long attached to the wider Trepang story was shown fake by duplicated clouds; the poster Mendel has argued at length that the material Brown found may be a 2018 Schriever Wargames fiction whose title he misread; NorCal Dave has pointed out that nobody has corroborated the programme beyond Brown's own account. Those are real objections and none of them has been answered.

Pass two, the substantive reading, and it is also strong. Strip away the production values and the film asserts one thing that is documented and unresolved. The administration's own NDA waiver, guidance number ES 2026-00818, permits disclosure to the President, to PURSUE and to AARO, and to nobody else. It grants no immunity. It creates no route to Congress. Burlison, a sitting congressman on the relevant task force, put in writing on 29 July that he did not know whether the waiver even reached testimony already given to Congress, and told potential witnesses to bring a lawyer and a member of Congress with them. That is not a grievance invented for a camera. It is the actual legal position, published by the administration and read the same way by outside counsel. The people in the film are not strangers to the record either. Two of them have testified under oath in public, one has testified to the Inspector General and AARO, one authored the document that a congressional task force has been chasing for two years, and one is an elected member of the House. When that group says the existing releases have not freed anyone to speak, they are describing a gap the paperwork confirms.

Both readings can be true at once, and here they are. A publicity campaign can be commercially motivated and still be pointing at a genuine legal dead end.

On tiering, the question this page answers is not whether non-human intelligence exists. It is whether a named group of people publicly asked the President for immunity on 10 August 2026, and they demonstrably did. The film exists, the accounts are verified, the timestamps are checkable. What the film asserts about recovered craft, about photographs and videos of non-human occupants, and about evidence seen with someone's own eyes remains exactly what Grusch's sworn testimony made it in 2023, an account resting on other people's direct knowledge rather than his own. No agency has confirmed it and no independent analyst has demonstrated it false. There is no evidenced counter-claim aimed at this event, only unanswered objections aimed at one participant's document. The tier is Unknown.