Trump Administration Names Avi Loeb to Head UFO Advisory Council

​Over the weekend, Galileo Project head and Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb announced that the White House appointed him to head a new UAP Scientific Advisory Council. Loeb had long insisted that he would not investigate UFOs for the government because he wanted all UFO research to be publicly available, but he has since changed his tune and is now planning to work with the Trump Administration through AARO, the Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI. 
 
“All Council members look forward to assisting the U.S. government agencies in figuring out the nature of UAPs,” Loeb wrote. “Our time will not be wasted because at the very least — we will promote national security.”

There is some question about how official the council is, or whether it actually exists, since there is no General Services Administration charter on file, as would be required to create an official advisory committee. As of this writing, Loeb is the only source for the (proposed) existence of the council. (UPDATE 6/16/26: The advisory council is apparently intended to advise the newly created interagency UAP Governance Board, though no official charter has been filed, as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972.)

​Loeb appointed Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer, who already works with Loeb on the UFO-themed Galileo Project, to the board, and Shermer said that he was “deeply honored to serve the White House” as part of the board. Loeb also named UFO advocate Garry Nolan, who claims space aliens visited him in his childhood bedroom, and Tim Gallaudet, who claims ghosts haunt his house and that his daughter speaks to them, to the board. As of this writing, Nolan and Gallaudet, longtime UFO advocates and regulars on the UFO circuit, have not publicly commented on the appointment.
 
Trump undoubtedly chose Loeb because he repeatedly saw Loeb talking about UFOs on Fox News and other cable news channels, the source of many of his personnel picks. Loeb, of course, joins other Trump appointees in an all-star roster of people who utterly failed at the task they were appointed to oversee. Loeb repeatedly made claims about alien evidence that turned out to be false, from his allegation that various interstellar objects were alien spaceships to his wrong conclusion that microspherules in the ocean fell off a UFO.
 
It’s not entirely surprising that Loeb and Shermer are excited to be working with Donald Trump, the most corrupt and lawless president in American history, or are happy to lend their media celebrity to Trump’s newest distraction from his many scandals. Shermer has moved steadily to the right over the years, embracing positions in line with those of anti-trans activists and defending the super-rich and their right to money and power.
 
Loeb, for his part, has long cozied up to elites to further his interests. In addition to advocating to be named UFO czar in failed Congressional UFO legislation several years ago, Loeb appears in the Epstein files. He is mentioned on Epstein’s calendar in October 2015 for a meeting with him, Andrew Strominger of OpenAI, fellow Harvard professor Shing-Tung Yau, and mathematician Conan Leung, presumably in connection with his effort, mentioned elsewhere in the files, to secure $20 million to $50 million to study black holes. A conflict prevented him from attending the scheduled meeting, and Yau advocated with Epstein on his behalf. Loeb is currently seeking a billion dollars from the U.S. government to study UFOs, and undoubtedly his advisory council will recommend giving it to him.