The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that the mysterious drones that were spotted in skies around New Jersey and the east coast at the end of last year were “authorized to be flown by the FAA”.

In the first press briefing of Donald Trump’s second administration, Leavitt said that she had “news directly from the president of the United States that was just shared with me in the Oval Office”.

“After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons,” she said, adding that “many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones”.

“In time, it got worse due to curiosity,” she said. “This was not the enemy.”

People started reporting the drones in the skies over northern New Jersey just before Thanksgiving, noting the aerial objects appeared to be hovering in formation and returned night after night.

A flurry of drone sightings occurred in December, including some seen above residential homes, military installations and critical infrastructure such as energy facilities, railway stations and reservoirs. Federal agencies deployed advanced detection technology to the regions where the drones were spotted as well as trained visual observers.

The FBI said it received more than 5,000 reports of drone sightings in a matter of weeks, but only about 100 required further investigation.

As more and more drone sightings were being reported, no one seemed to know for certain where the flying objects were from or who was behind them. Lawmakers in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and other states on the east coast demanded answers on behalf of the American public, raised concerns about the drones and criticized what they saw as the lack of urgency and transparency on the drone sightings.

One state lawmaker even called for the state of New Jersey to issue a limited state of emergency.

Drone and national security experts continued to tell the public that there was nothing to worry about, and in mid-December, a group of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense, issued a statement saying that they had examined the tips from concerned citizens and assessed that the sightings were a mix of lawful drones, airplanes, helicopters and stars.

Then the FAA issued a month-long drone ban in parts of New Jersey and New York.

At the time, Trump, who was then the president-elect, questioned why government officials had not been more forthcoming and said that the “government knows what is happening”.

“Look, our military knows where they took off from – if it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage,” Trump said.

Former president Joe Biden said at the time that the drones were “nothing nefarious” and told the public that his administration was following the issue closely but that there was “no sense of danger”.

John Kirby, Biden’s national security communications adviser, also said at the time that the drones were not a national security or public safety risk.

“To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” Kirby said at the time.