Speaker unverified: evaluation

Transcript context

…ds. On the morning of January 6th, they told us. They said, hey, you got to come in early. Just get here early, there's going to be a big protest. It'd be easier for you if you're here early. So okay. 00. Early to me is I'll go 4:30, 5:00, and I'll get in. This was during the pandemic when nobody was ever on the streets. Normally, from where I live, to get to the Capitol, it takes like 15 minutes. This time, it took 45 minutes, because there were buses, and buses, and buses from all over the country. The mall was already pretty well-filled and packed with people, energy, activity, and signs. You can read the signs as you're going in, signs I've never seen before that didn't make any sense to me. I thought, okay, this is actually going to be a lot worse than I even thought. I tried to send my staff home, but they stayed, they insisted. And we had already pre released what I was going to do, which was to certify the election. Fast forward a little bit. We're in the House chamber and I'm up in the balcony. I wanted to see a couple of things. First, I wanted to make sure Pence did the right thing. I don't know what my plan was going to be if he didn't, but I just wanted to make sure. The second thing, I just wanted to see if they would actually go through with these objections. I thought it was crazy that it's the most anti-democratic thing I've ever seen in my life. I still feel that way. I'm sitting there, Pence does the right thing. Okay, good. Then Ted Cruz stands up and objects, and I was just disgusted. I'm just completely disgusted. I said, I got to get out of here. I started walking out of the chamber, and I was going to go back to my office, and then I could see the people start to breach. I looked at one of the windows and you see the people start to go. I flipped on my Twitter. You could see, oh, my, they've already gotten through the Senate. At that point, I thought, okay, the best thing for me to do is just get into my office. I get into the elevator, go through the tunnels, boom. By the time I get back, the folks were already in the house. The riders were already in the house, they were trying to evacuate people, and basically, the session had been canceled. Now you're sitting there going, okay, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's not good. I know that much. The basic instructions we got were, if you're not with the other members, they had hidden the other members in a sort of a bunker, if you will. If you're not with them, shut off all the lights and be dead silent, because we don't want you making any noise. It's like, okay. I'm sitting in my office and thinking, okay, I should probably change out of these clothes so I don't look like a member of Congress in case they bust through the door. I threw on jeans and running shoes, and I'm thinking to myself, well, I can still run a little bit. If they get in here, I guess I'll just jump over and then sprint. Maybe that's my plan. We did all that. Periodically, you would hear screams, yells, and stuff. I called down at one point and I said, hey, there's somebody making a lot of noise in our hallway. Can you send somebody up? n. We did all that. Periodically, you would hear screams, yells, and stuff. I called down at one point and I said, hey, there's somebody making a lot of noise in our hallway. Can you send somebody up? The dispatcher was like, sir, we are completely overwhelmed, just do the best you can. I'm like, okay. That doesn't sound so good. I started trying to get a hold of folks at the White House and just anybody I knew who might be there. I said, hey, he's got to call this off. This has gone way too far. He wouldn't do it. It took him hours, I think almost three hours, maybe a little more than that. When you're in a situation like that, 3 hours feels like 15 hours. You're just hoping to God that somebody does something responsible, and it just wasn't happening. My view remains that it's an unforgivable assault on the country, and it was led by the former president who was inspired by him. Ultimately, my view, which I think is coming out in this January 6th Commission is that he kind of liked it. He kind of liked what was going on. I spoke to a number of people who were around him that day and came to that conclusion. At that point, you have to ask yourself, are you willing to make that impeachment vote? To be clear, there was previously an impeachment vote that you had not been in favor of. But this specific event is sort of what changed your mind to say, yes, I'm one of, I believe, it was six Republicans to vote to impeach.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.