topics that have historically attracted interest that are not front and center. that includes the section 230 debate. data privacy was something that was hugely front and center in the tech space may be between 19, 2020 and visually. those things are off to the side a little bit. people are interested but there is not any consensus proposal out there in any chamber that is going to move. >> the future of the tech industry, monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. ♪

>> c-span sat down with 14 members of congress to get the first 10 experiences on what happened on january 6 is ever counting and accepting electoral college votes for the presidential election. they talked about what they saw, heard, and experience that day in the house chamber. today we hear from three house lawmakers. >> madame speaker, members of congress, pursuant to the constitution and the laws of the united states, the senate and house of representatives are meeting in joint session to verify the certificates and count the votes of the electors in several states for president

and vice president of the united states. >> at 1:00 p.m. on january 6 come the house incident met in joint session to count the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election. an hour later, a mob entered the capital with the intention of disrupting the vote. as the protesters move closer to the senate and house chambers, vice president pence and speaker pelosi were evacuated to safe locations. minutes later, security officials ushered steny hoyer and other congressional leadership off the house for. with tension rising in the building, the house and senate abruptly recessed. >> without objection, the house is going to go back into recess. >> there were a few dozen members of congress and the house chamber at that time including representative zoloft and and robbie davis, who both served as tellers for the counting of the votes. represented of lofgren tells us

why she was sitting on the house deists that day. rep. lofgren: i am chair of the house administration of the committee and was tasked as such to be one of the tellers for receiving the electoral college votes, myself and the ranking member, mr. davis and the rules committee, which is the equivalent committee of the senate. when there was an objection to the arizona electoral college vote, we broke as the constitution provides into our separate bodies. of course we were already in the house chambers. i had been working with the team of other house members to try and prepare. we had heard that there would be challenges that we thought were

improper so we had worked, myself and others, to prepare our team for that discussion. and we really decided that the primary people to defend the votes of the states where the members of congress from that state. and so we had a lot of data and information that we were able to provide to state allegations that might be challenged. but i gave, i think i was the first to speak on the democratic side defending the constitution. and at the conclusion of my remarks, i needed to stay on the floor but a lot of the republican members were not wearing masks, and i wanted to

stay as far away from their air as i could. i didn't want to get infected. so i went into the cloakroom, the democratic cloakroom. there was no one there, and i felt somewhat safer in terms of covert exposure from the republicans. there are tds in the cloakroom -- tv's in the cloakroom and one was on the seating. i thought i will turn the other one on to new's to see what is going on. and when i did, i saw that there was this tremendous mob outside the congress. and that they appeared to be breaking into the congress. in fact, it looks like they had broken into the congress.

rep. lofgren: so i went back out on the floor and no one seemed to be aware that that was going on. i went back into the cloakroom, and by then one of the cloakroom staffers was a capitol police officer, was trying to lock the doors, the doors into the cloakroom are really heavy and there is a lock, and the police officer was able to lock it so the people outside of the cloakroom couldn't get in. but he couldn't, there were some problem with the mechanism and he couldn't lock it so people couldn't go out through that door. i remember the staffers saying no one is going out, don't worry about that.

i remember i went out back on the floor, and by then it seemed pretty apparent that there was a big problem. i remember talking to tom o'halloran, who was a former sheriff and really an expert in security. i said tom, i think there is a problem, a mob has broken in. he said, don't worry about that, there will be a swat team them very soon. i thought, i'm not adequate explaining -- adequately explaining what is going on. tom was waiting on the floor to speak and by then we can hear pounding on the doors. at some point, i can't remember what order, but i talked to the sergeant at arms who didn't seem too alarmed at the time, actually.

and we were getting alerts on our phones, like the canon office building had been locked down. shelter-in-place, and around that point i looked and realized that the speaker who had been presiding was being whisked away by her security team. she is second in line to the president, the vice president and the speaker in terms of line of succession. and i thought, we are in trouble here. jim mcgovern, chairman of the rules committee, went to preside to trying keep matters going. >> members will take their seats. the house will be in order. rep. lofgren: a police officer came and made an announcement

that the capitol had been breached. [indiscernible] rep. lofgren: i think at some point, mcgovern realized that we're not going to be able to continue the proceedings. a capitol officer came and said that it was necessary to evacuate, and that we should take the hoods.

there are hoods underneath each seat in the chamber, take them out and be prepared to put them on. so everybody did. and i think when you pull the little red tag, it activates and so there had been teargas released in the rotunda which is why we were advised we might need to wear them. there was this tremendous kind of hissing noise from all these hood, as the background of the moment. and of course the pounding and the noise from the mob had become much louder. at some point, someone up in the chambers, in the gallery, a member was yelling at the

republicans to call trump and have trump call off his mob. and there were some little yelling back and forth among members in the gallery. [crowd shouting] rep. lofgren: it was pretty orderly on the house floor, where i was. as we were told to evacuate, we were really brought out to the speakers gallery and down the stairway and at that point, we could hear people at the other end of the hallway, the mob. i was down the stairs, glass was being broken. i think the officer that

prevented the mob from entering probably saved our lives because we were not completely evacuated, we were walking down the stairs. there was one member forming the line and we were behind him. ultimately we got to the rayburn tunnel and then to longworth where we walked. it was a large group, i didn't count how many members, but a fairly large group. they were to shelter in a room in the longworth building. i thought, i'm on the fourth floor, i think i will just go

there. so they went right, i went left, and went up to the fourth floor to my office which was barricaded. my chief of staff was there all by herself and had to move this gigantic table to block the door, so she unblocked it enough for me to get in, and i realized in that we would probably be safe from the mob for the moment. throughout this time, my family, especially my son and daughter, had been texting me, making sure that i was safe. i said i'm safe, i'm on the floor of the house. they are going, we don't think so. so i was able to text them that i was in my office, and looking out the window i have a view of the capitol, and i could see the tremendous chaos across the street. it was really uncontrolled, and i didn't know what would happen

next when the mob would reach the office buildings, it in their search to hunt down members are really what was going on. i did text the authorities wondering why steps were not being taken to control the mob. i realize now it is because the forces were completely overwhelmed. they couldn't have actually done that. but i couldn't help but contrast the kind of very aggressive crowd control measures used against black lives matter demonstrators who were for the most part peaceful, and the reaction to this violent mob. so we waited there for many hours until finally the guard arrived in the matter was under

control. i was on the phone, of course, with jamie fleet, the staff director for house admin, who was over there. it was essential to get back in the building, it was an opportunity to finish our business at a secure location. i said that's not going to be good enough, we need to show the country that the mob did not overturn this government, and of course the speaker was thinking the same thing. jamie went over and said it was really a mess. i mean actually the mob never got into the chambers, our chambers, they did the senate, but he said there was blood on the floor and the place had been trashed. the janitorial staff was over there cleaning it up, making sure that the congress could reconvene and is soon as it was

safe and the bomb dogs had been through, we could reconvene. i was there until the end of all of the counting, and the tellers had to stay and sign things. i didn't get back to my residence in d.c. until after 3:00, that's when i knew that i was safe. when you got to your residence at 3:00 a.m., do you remember the feeling and the thought you had? when you had time to reflect on the day? rep. lofgren: i really thought, what a tragic day for the united states, that these -- this frenzied mob could have reached the capital, something that didn't even happen in the civil war, and try and essentially overthrow the government.

i mean, we were in the middle of the constitutional process that is key to implementing the votes of the american people in the selection of their next president. and they try to prevent that from happening. that is sedition. so that was a very troubling day for the united states. >> also on the house dais was illinois republican robbie davis. he recounts his experience at the front of the house chamber on january 6. rep. davis: i was one of the four tellers that was tasked with reading the results from each state, sitting in front of the vice president and also the speaker of the house. this had been a pretty perfunctory operation when i've been witnessing it before as a member of congress. we knew this one was going to be

a little more popular to watch, but at the same time, i didn't think we would see what we saw that day. >> you are one of the tellers, and it what point do you realize , something is going on outside the chamber doors? rep. davis: well, earlier in the day i just anticipated being on the floor for a very long time. i remember being over and rayburn and i was grabbing a quick bite to eat at the subway shop that is in the basement. i'm like, i better go ahead and get two sandwiches so i don't come back here in -- i can come back later during the debate any the other one for dinner. i got those two sandwiches, and i remember thinking to myself, this will be somewhat normal and it would just be a long day, and we will get through it. listen to the bait, have votes

-- listen to the debate, have votes, and what have you. but i began noticing something wasn't right when we began debating arizona. i went down to the sergeant at arms office and i saw on the video screens and the outdoor cameras, i saw different parts of the perimeter being breached. i saw capitol police officers in the capitol basically panicking -- not panicking, but it being in a very high, somewhat panicked mode. that is when i ran back to my office and ate one of the sandwiches really quick while i'm waiting to get some answers. my team because me because they were on the floor, my house administration team. my deputy staff director, nick crocker, my director of member services and my general counsel. jen called me and said, i think

you better get back here, they are talking about closing the four down. i hurried up and ate my sandwich as i was walking out my office door, and i was walking onto the floor as leadership was being evacuated. i stopped -- i saw steve scalise and his team going out as i was going in. >> did you have a conversation with them? rep. davis: let's just say my comment can now be summed up via text as "wtf." >> did anybody from leadership tell you what was going on as they were coming out, or did they have any comment? rep. davis: we already knew what was going on. i had seen the outer perimeter being reached, so i was going onto the floor while they were leaving, and just minutes later, that's when all the doors were shut. we were seeing footage of the senate being breached, so

everybody was on pretty high alert. i was talking to new members, helping them to open up the hoods that i had never touched before in my eight years as a member of congress. now we are figuring out how to open them and how to possibly put them on, which i never had to do, but at the same time, there were a lot of freshmen there. this was their first real experience as a member of congress, and we were kind of watching them and talking to my fellow colleagues about what we could do to try and stop this. >> what were those conversations like? tell us about them. rep. davis: i remember a conversation i had with marjorie taylor greene. she was very active during orientation. she was very upset about what was going on, and her and i chatted. she said, what can i do? i said how about you go back in

the cloakroom and film a video and posted on social media and if you have any friends out there, tell them to stop. and she did that. that is one example of the types of conversations we had during that short time before we were evacuated off the floor. >> who evacuate's you off the floor? what was that like? rep. davis: the most superior capitol police, after all the internal doors were locked, wooden doors that i have really not seen on the inside, because usually they are open, they were all locked and those doors began to be pounded on by the folks who broke into the capitol. they were offering instructions to be calm and stay in the chamber, and the next thing you know, they said everybody moved to this side, this exit. when we were going about exiting in an orderly fashion, on what i

would say is the republican side of the speaker's lobby, we could hear the pounding going on on the speaker's lobby doors. [crowd shouting] >> let's go, move! rep. davis: i was with my team and we were near the end of all the members being evacuated. some members, i would ask, are

you ok? i remember giving raskin a big hug because of what happened to his son just a few days or weeks earlier and i had not had a chance to see him yet. inking back, that was pretty surreal to think about that at the time. just the tragedy that he went through, now going through the evacuation off the house floor, i felt for him and everybody else. but i walked out the door and immediately ran into one of my colleagues, ron wright, who has since passed away, but was undergoing treatments for lung cancer. he couldn't walk down the stairs. so the bottom line is, a capitol police officer and i picked ron up and carried him downstairs, and by the grace of god, there was a wheelchair on the first

floor that we used to get him fully evacuated. >> what were you thinking as you were going about this? rep. davis: how brave the capitol police officers were. i have seen that bravery already on the baseball field in alexandria, virginia, just a few years ago. i saw what well-trained officers do when they run toward gunfire so all of us can run away from it. i saw that same bravery from the capitol police that day as we were being evacuated, and as they wanted to do their job to get everybody on safely off the house floor and out of that speaker's lobby and into a safer area. it was very surreal when i was able to go back to the capitol before everyone else. we finally left the floor at 4:00 a.m. i was one of the last people off the floor after signing the

official canvases. watched the vice president, speaker pelosi and others leave. i went back to my office and changed because i had a 6:30 a.m. flight back home. so i go from being a teller on the house floor to complete a process that's going to go down our nations history as one of the worst days in the legislative branch history, but in the day -- in the end i'm going back to put my jeans on, hat and i go take a quick nap at the united gate at reagan national. the irony is, as i woke up, there were people that could have been at the capital that day that were sitting around next to us getting on our flight. so i don't think they realized the impact of the decision they may have made to break the law and disobey a direct order and

come into that capital. and they should be held accountable for that. >> while congressman davis was acting as a teller, democrat madeleine dean was preparing the challenge for the state of pennsylvania. rep. dean: i was preparing for the pennsylvania challenge to the electors. i wanted to listen in on the first challenge, which was arizona, so i had left my office , i had an allotted time to go up to the gallery to listen in and observe. at the same time, i was finalizing my remarks, and so as i waited in the gallery and heard the argument being made, i remember standing in the gallery next to congressman dean phillips. the two of us were listening to the arguments and just saying, shame, shame to these arguments.

in anticipation of the day, i made sure that none of my staff are in. we expected it could be difficult, we had planned that i would park underground, that i would use only the underground tunnel, knowing that there could be outside protests of some kind. and so out of an abundance of basic caution, i made sure we stayed underground, and i was up in the gallery. the very first notice that something was wrong was there was a strange announcement from the floor, which was, sit down, and we complied, of course. and then it was, when everybody either neil or prepare to lie on the ground. that was just strange and stunning. with that, i started to plan,

maybe i could shield myself behind the front rall if there is some concern. so i started to move down a few rows and encouraged another colleague to come with me. and then they said would you take out your gas masks, they are under your seat. i had no idea there were gas masks under the seats. that stunned me. so we all scrambled and got the gas masks. i don't know if you saw some of the footage of that, but they are triple wrapped, so we were kneeling down on the ground, helping one another, trying to protect ourselves while unwrapping these tinfoil masks.

i saw veronica and i thought she looked like two beautiful at target, so i yelled at her to get down. then they said to put on the gas masks, the rioters have reached the rotunda and teargas has been disbursed. all the while, after mitt -- i have to admit, these are important protections but they won't be necessary here in the chamber. the moment i thought that, i heard them banging on the chamber doors. that, to me, signaled the extraordinary seriousness of it, having no idea of the numbers or anything else, but to hear that banging, it made it extremely surreal. we were told to put our gas

masks on and await instructions to go across the gallery into to a safe place. i was terrified. i called my husband, i called my son. i feel bad now that i scared them. >> what were those conversations like with your husband and your son? rep. dean: i remember my son, i could hear his wife there, they were on speakerphone together. they were just begging me to stay safe. i do feel bad that i scared them. but i always had confidence that we would be all right. i didn't really get the gravity of it. i did sort of visualize that from that place where the piercing of the doors took place, i pictured and ar style weapon spraying around the chamber and targets on the

ground and up above in the gallery. that's why i just cap staying below that wall. the conversations were i tried to assure them to stay calm, i would be all right. >> and what were the conversations like with your colleagues, as you are trying to hide yourselves and protect yourselves behind that wall in the gallery? rep. dean: that it was unreal. i kept using the expression actually as the arguments were going on, do they realize they've taken this lie so far, too far? don't they realize how dangerously far they have taken this lie? these false arguments, how they have misled the american people into having americans attack americans?

but i have to admit to you, greta, because we did not have the benefit of television, i had no idea of the numbers. i remember at one point prior to the breaking into the gallery, i wanted to go back to the office to finish my remarks, and as i tried to, a very nice, very tall capitol police officer said ma'am, you can't go back there, there is a bomb threat. i peeked out a window in a darkened office, i actually went into this darkened office and peeked out through a porthole window up at the top of that portion of the gallery. and i saw the other side of the capitol, and there weren't so many protesters. it did not look anything like what was happening on the others. so i had some reassurance that

all is well, at least on this side. with that, i heard a radio system talking about infiltration of the capitol visitor center, almost like a radio report, that someone had gotten into the capitol visitor center. that's when i went back in the gallery in that's when we got that series of instructions. your mind just says, maybe the capitol police are having to deal with two dozen people. it seemed so ad hoc, they said we are going to get you to a safe place, and they started yelling rayburn cafeteria. and streams of us went down escalators through the tunnels, journalists and others and staff together, with many members, of course.

with very few officers visible to us. in fact, wyman who was directing traffic literally had on one of those yellow traffic guard vests, go this way, go this way. as we ran out summer climbing over chairs, climbing over railings. i remember at one point someone was trying to get under a railing and whoever was in front of him got kicked in the face. it was just desperate, with people just moving. i don't know what the plan was but they raised us to rayburn cafeteria and then i started to call my staff and said, this is

ridiculous, this is not a safe place, i don't know what they are thinking. not too long after they moved us over to the ways and means room. but the conversations were stunned, terrified, disbelief. it was at least two hours before i knew the volume and the violence of what was going on. i'm still upset over staff and what happened to staff. i remember at one point, i'm sure it was the best of intentions, but they said members only. well what was staff supposed to do, stand in the hallway and be victims? fortunately it was just a mix of folks that all went into that large room. i made calls to family and they said, can you tell us where you

are? and i said no, they have asked us not to but i assure you i'm an essay for space with many of my colleagues. i remember someone pulled up a chair and sat down, it was a colleague who was a doctor. i'm forgetting his name, but he came around to a person and said, are you all right? do you have any underlying health conditions? you saw the photo up in the gallery as they awaited their escape. she talked with the doctor through what she was feeling and he talked her through it also. i tell you that to say that, i remember i said right away to my

colleagues that we have to catalog the heroic kindness and the good acts along with the bad. there were a lot of good acts. capitol you were it -- greta: you were in that room for how long? rep. dean: i think it was for four plus hours. i looked around and i said, oh my god, of course i know this room very well. i knew the back rooms, i knew where the ladies room was, so i went to the area behind the ways and means room where members, republican and democrat, were watching, they had fox on an cnn or msnbc. it was literally two hours in when i got to see the magnitude of this insurrection and the gravity of it.

i went back there to get water and use the restroom and just watched in stunned disbelief with republicans and democrats. greta: at that point, as you understand have any people came to the capitol, now what are the conversations like with your colleagues? rep. dean: i remember i spoke to a couple of republicans and said let's just make this a private conversation, so i wouldn't say who it was, but they were shocked and in horror and disbelief. there was a moment early on in the holding room that i thought was very powerful, and that is when liz cheney, they stood with microphones parallel to each

other and staying the same words, don't reveal who you -- where you are, don't take interviews, if you have any medical issues, and in unison, the power of saying, and we will go back and complete our duty. we will return to the floor and complete our constitutional duty . i thought it was just a powerful moment of unity and of clarity, that we had a job to do, and this shameful, deadly insurrection incited by a failed president would not stop us. greta: you were in that room for four hours. what happens next? rep. dean: let me point out also, while we were in that room , most of us wore masks, and some scoffed. we had to be necessarily quite close together.

it's hundreds of people, and some scoffed, some graciously offered masks to republican members who said no. so between the shame of the argument, the shame of aiding that inside it insurrection, and the shame of using the pandemic as a political football and not being interested in protecting themselves or their colleagues or their staff, it was just an infuriating set of emotions. i was in touch with a colleague in pennsylvania, she was trapped in her office, and invited me and others -- we go by the fab four. in fact we all wound up there. after staying in that room for so very long, i texted her, was

she still ok? and so i made my way now in the dark, to her office in longworth. and she let me in, she had literally barricaded her doors. she had moved her desk away from the window, just a total quick reconfiguration of her office entirely to protect yourself against an attack. just insane. i sat maybe an hour or so they're talking with her about how she was. others came in, and everybody talked about where they were. greta: how often do you think about that day? and does it make you get emotional when you do?

rep. dean: sure, i think of it every single day. mostly in utter disbelief that that actually happened. it is stunning to me that americans attacked americans. that they attacked police officers. they beat, and in one case killed, police officer, and it was all riled up and radicalized over an incredible, insidious infection, and infection of lies, about one another. the power of lies to do that kind of damage to human beings, to our democracy, to our seat of government. so i know i think of it every single day, and i think of the precariousness of it all.

for the republican members to continue with the challenge, don't they realize they were at risk just as much as i was? those rioters were not going to say, wait a second, are you republican or democrat? they didn't care about mike pence being a republican. being vice president to the president and to all of us. they wanted to kill us. if they had gotten their hands on any one of us -- it is infuriating. and i am in a state of disbelief to this day. >> shortly after 3:30 in the morning on january 7, lawmakers certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. >> the number is 538. a majority is 207. the votes for president of the united states are as follows.

joe's r biden junior of the state of delaware has received 306 boats. donald j. trump of the state of florida has received 232 boats. the whole number of electors appointed to vote for vice president of the united states is 538. a majority is 270. comley d harris of the state of california has received 306 votes. michael r. pence of the state of indiana has received 232 votes. the purpose of the joint meeting continued -- having concluded, the chair declares the joint session resolved. [applause] >> our coverage of the january 6

joint session and the congressional hearings examining what happened at the capital that day can be found at our website, c-span.org. stay with c-span for continuing coverage of the investigation into the january 6 attack. >> house minority leader kevin mccarthy held a news conference before the first hearing of the january 6 select committee which is investigating the attack on the u.s. capitol. a look now his remarks along with some of his gop colleagues. >> thank you all for coming. i first want to start by expressing my condolences to deputy philip campos, an officer who was selflessly serving his community who was killed in the line of duty on sunday. he is a father, a husband, sheriff officer and former marine. three others were shot in the standoff as well