In the News

Twice during the Jan. 6 Committee’s two-hour televised hearing on Thursday night, witnesses and members of Congress mentioned Room 208 in the U.S. Capitol or the Ways and Means Committee room.

Those spaces are where U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield was that day. He serves as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“I think that anybody who would have witnessed it first-hand as I did. They were at the door,” Neal recalled Friday on a visit to Westfield. ”They almost took the door down. The police that were with me, the Capitol Police, had their guns drawn at the door.

Neal has told the story that Capitol Police asked everyone barricaded in his offices, the door blocked by a huge table, to write down their names and addresses in case the situation worsened.

He praised the House hearings, which resume Monday, as “well done,” adding that one lesson learned is that former president Donald Trump sowed the seeds of the attack.

Neal said he will always look back proudly on the vote he and his colleagues took at 3:30 a.m., after the mob was gone.

“We went in and certified the election for the candidate that really won it,” Neal said.

He dismissed the notion that the election was stolen as “nonsense”.

“I think that one of the great parts of democracy is that the winner accepts victory and the loser accepts defeat,” Neal said. “It is clear that this was a conspiracy at the top echelons of the federal government to undo a national election.”

Neal said he hasn’t given a statement to the committee, but has a good relationship with the members of Congress on it, both the Republicans and Democrats.