Moran shares thoughts on classified documents, toxic train derailment

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Classified documents and the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment were addressed by Congressman Nathaniel Moran during his weekly visit with KTBB. Moran discussed his new bill, the Information Security Act, which seeks to train government officials in the proper process of designating and handling classified government documents. Moran told us, “There’s a number of documents that are out there that probably have been over-classified. Typically, “classified” should only be assessed to information that if released would have some detrimental effect on our national security.”

Moran continued, “I’m certain if you go back and look at all these millions of documents that get classified every year as national security documents that you’re gonna see that there’s a lot of officials out there that are hiding behind this classification marking. That should in itself be a red flag. We cannot allow elected officials to hide behind these classification markings. Transparency and accountability is essential at the highest level of government.”

Moran also commented on what he considers the Biden Administration’s tardy response to the high-profile toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. According to Moran, “For a president who claims to have environmental quality and environmental protection at the top of his list, I think this is just another example of his tone-deafness and his hypocrisy between his actions and his words. President Biden, by his delay in responding to this incident personally and by Secretary Buttigieg’s long delay before he actually showed up onsite, clearly sends a message to those people in Ohio that their environmental quality and their standard of living is not of the utmost concern to the president and his secretary. And that’s unfortunate.”

The congressman added, “I learned a long time ago the answer to the question of where should a leader be, and the leader should always be where he can best manage the situation. And the best place for Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden to manage that very important environmental situation was there onsite. And the simply just ignored it — in fact, ignored it really until former President Trump showed up onsite and reassured them that he was gonna do all he could for that community. It turned really more into a political battle than a real service to the community, and that’s unfortunate — not the way it should be.”