Donald Trump bizarrely demands release of 'captivating' Amelia Earhart files

President Donald Trump announced in a bizarre social media post on Friday that he would declassify federal records related to Amelia Earhart, the pioneering pilot who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

The U.S. President said it's an 'interesting story' that has 'captivated millions.'

"Amelia made it almost three quarters around the World before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again," he wrote on Truth Social after returning to the White House from the Ryder Cup in New York. "Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions."

It was unclear what records the government could have on Earhart since her 1937 disappearance over the Pacific Ocean, or why these records would still be classified.

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Republican Rep. Kimberlyn King-Hinds of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands requested that Trump declassify the files in July. Earhart's story "carries particular weight" to her constituents, she wrote in a letter to the president, as some elderly residents have shared "credible, firsthand accounts of having seen her on the island of Saipan."

Earhart's disappearance has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, including the idea that she was captured by Japanese forces or landed on a small island in the Pacific.

From alien abduction to Japanese execution, theories abound

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of her attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe. She had radioed that she was running low on fuel.

The Navy searched but found no trace. The U.S. government's official position has been that Earhart and Noonan went down with their plane.

Since then, theories have veered into the absurd, including abduction by aliens, or Earhart living in New Jersey under an alias. Others speculate she and Noonan were executed by the Japanese or died as castaways on an island.

Archivists are hopeful that Romeo's Deep Sea Vision is close to solving the puzzle - if for no other reason than to return attention to Earhart's accomplishments.

Romeo wanted more of an adventure than his commercial real estate career. His father flew for Pan American Airlines, his brother is an Air Force pilot and he has a private pilot's license himself. Hailing from an "aviation family," he'd long held interest in the Earhart mystery.

Romeo said he sold his real estate interests to fund last year's search and buy a $9 million underwater drone from a Norwegian company. The state-of-the-art technology is called the Hugin 6000 - a reference to its ability to break into the deepest layer of the ocean at 6,000 meters (19,700 feet).

A 16-person crew began a roughly 100-day search in September 2023, scanning over 5,200 square miles (13,468 square kilometers) of seafloor. They narrowed their probe to the area around Howland Island, a mid-Pacific atoll between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii.

But it wasn't until the team reviewed sonar data in December that they saw the fuzzy yellow outline of what resembles a plane.

"In the end, we came out with an image of a target that we believe very strongly is Amelia's aircraft," Romeo told The Associated Press.