tribute and honor of ourr-in-chf commander-in-chief, barackck obama, the 44th president of the united states. please remain at your seat and enjoy the united states army band until the departure of the official party. [applause] speak live to the east room of the white house where michelle obama as a final speech as first lady. she speaking at this years school counselor of the year award ceremony, a white house tradition started by mrs. obama two years ago. school counselors from across the country will be attending. this years winner of the lord is terri tchorzynski from a technical school in battle creek, michigan. live coverage here on c-span2.

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[inaudible conversations] >> and this is a live picture from east room of the white house on this friday morning as we await michelle obama i his final speech as first lady. the occasion and six years school council of the year award ceremony. this years winner is terri tchorzynski the works at a technical school in battle creek, michigan. this event is expected to get

underway in just a couple of minutes. while we wait we spoke earlier today with a reporter covering today's joint meeting of congress to certify the results of the electoral college. >> host: tell us a little bit about what lawmakers will be meeting to do today and what the process is. >> guest: the way it works, it's a convoluted process. it's only use once every four years. the way it works is the elect doors in each state are supposed to have signed and sealed a report of their electoral votes and sent one of them to the vice president who is the presiding officer for all this and mailed to others to the archivist for safekeeping. and then congress meets in a joint session. usually only a few members of their win its working situation, and they call the roll off a bit of good by state. they open up the the results and they keep a tally.

that's the way it is supposed to work. sometimes it is taken less than a half an hour but we don't think that's going to be the case today. >> host: during the electoral college vote where the possibility of the states with the electors rising up. it turned out only to. can democratic lawmakers tried to stop donald trump's presidency from being certified? >> guest: they can. they key here is that in order for any objection to even be considered it has the same objection has to be raised by at least one house member and at least one senator. as of last night we did not know of any senators were going to join ms. jackson lee and a handful of other house members who want to raise these objections but we also do know that members have been told to stay close, if they were not planning on leaving town this weekend, that they should stay close because there may yet be votes today.

what happens is if there is a proper objection raised, i.e., something that is supported by both a house member at a senator, then the two houses of congress are supposed to meet separately to rule on these objections. the last time that has happened which was in 2005, actually there was stephanie tubbs jones from cleveland, barbara boxer, california, raise an objection about ohio's electoral votes. there was a pause in action during the ceremonial joint session. the two houses of congress met. they voted down the objection and then they resumed their ceremonies. so that is the way any objection would be handled. it seems highly unlikely, given especially the republicans controlled both the house and the senate, that any such objections would be sustained in separate votes by the republican house and the republican senate. >> host: how unusual is in this circumstance? it seems normally this would

probably just a matter of formality, right? most americans probably didn't even realize the role of congress in certifying the presidency. >> guest: that's exactly right. the last time this happened which was four years ago more or less today, the congressional record noted that the entire session took just 23 minutes. it's interesting for super congress nerds come it can be interesting. it's always an interesting situation when the vice president who is charged with presiding over the ceremony is a player in the election. al gore famously was the vice president running to succeed bill clinton and lost the most contested election in the last century and had to preside over essentially his formal loss of the election in which there were several of these objections that were raised. no senators went along their al gore had to make several rulings from the chair, sort of gambling to have people who wanted to make speeches and say that's not appropriate. those are the exceptions.

by the way, another bit of trivia, the vice president doesn't have to do this. if he feels aggrieved, hubert humphrey was the vice president in only 1969 who just lost the presidency to richard nixon and he declined to take the job so the job then fell to the president pro tem of the senate. >> host: what happens next? does this go to the president for his signature like a bill? what's the procedure and how is this finalize? >> guest: it does not. there are tally clerks and after the read from alabama down to wyoming, the votes are tallied up. there are sort of ceremonial tally keepers from the house and the senate who keep the count. at the end of the count is announced at the magic words are the vice president says, where are those magic words? the magic word or essentially says that he's got, i hereby rule, i had it here. hold on just a second because this is what you want -- this

announcement shall be deemed sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president. and that's it. the vice president, you know, the winners have one and they are the president-elect and vice president-elect. there is no such presidential signature. there is no indwelling of the bill. there's none of the normal part of major stuff. it's a unique system. >> host: david hawkings, senior editor for roll call, thank you for joining us. >> guest: take care. >> live coverage of that joint session of congress when he gets underway at 1 p.m. eastern on c-span. we are here once again in the east room of the white house where first lady michelle obama is waiting in the wings to offer her final speech as the first lady of the u.s. she will be introducing this years school council of the year. year. the award goes to terri tchorzynski, i counselor at a technical school in battle creek, michigan.

we expected this award ceremony to get underway just a couple of minutes, and when it does we will have live coverage on c-span2. president-elect trump is receiving a briefing today and senior intelligence officials and among the items expected to be addressed, the apparent russian hacking of the 2016th election. we spoke with a reporter who covered yesterday senate armed services committee investigating those same issues and for cyber threats. >> good morning. >> host: give us the highlights about what happened yesterday. what new was uncovered from this hearing? >> guest: well, the news today as content based about what happened on what were supposed be doing as little. that we're not when you find out until next week when the intelligence director of national intelligence has been preparing. partial release to the public. we did get to see some of the attention on party start

display. they are not super happy about a lot of the climate that's been around, doubting their work. a lot of members of congress are not very happy about some of the discussion the president-elect has been saying. disparaging intelligence community. also the intelligence chiefs are singly going to have a stronger response against cyber attacks like this and that doesn't mean we can defend every cyber attack. it does mean we should be responding with cypress attacks over all that we should be think about additional sanctions against russia and also launching counter propaganda effort because so much of what the involvement of slave to the action was part of it was hacked but part of it was the spread of fake news and false information that is difficult to gauge the effect of the election but it was out there and poisoned the environment potentially not to the point of actually having effected anything the way things turned up but that is that when that sort of stuff happens and we have to be focused on that.

james clapper called -- steroids as part of the result will be seeing a lot of that topic i believe once that reporters partial release to the public. congress is getting based on it next week. >> host: talk about that aspect of the, this information of propaganda war that intelligence officials, talk about beyond hacking. did they make suggestions about how to fix it beyond bringing back this information agency that you're talking about? >> guest: no. you can see you really went intelligence agency, intelligence community feeds limitations of its purview of its jurisdiction in this area. it's their job to say here's what happened, here's what we're doing, to lay out the plan and everything went into. they stop short of a time a member of the committee asked them what should we do. those are policy decisions. that's your job. so what we're going to end up seeing probably is that there's

going to be a lot of focus on the topic. it's been addressed to some degree in congress, just not completely. in the defense bill that passed last month, lawmakers kind of foaddressing this whole idea of what's going on with united states ability to project its position. back in the cold war we had a stronger voice in america, i read your free europe that everybody listen to. that came up in the hearing yesterday when they said no one listens to the radio anymore. we don't do this social media online stuff as well as the russians do. russia, first of all, the state controls most of the media in russia. also it's been pretty well documented through articles there is this kind of trolling operation that comes out of that country that gets onto twitter, gets onto facebook, facebook, gets onto all social media. there were basically saying yesterday that part of this is in the dissemination of misinformation and this is a classic sort of move that rush

is perfected and other countries as well. when you make people not sure exactly what's true, when you people that are spreading and passing the new stories that are not based on facts are not real and are just fake fabrication, granted russia was not the only actor doing that. there were independent people well. the results, this was classic russian stuff and as many of the members of the committee were pointing out, it even got to the point where you have friends come in coming actions good advisor passing around some of the stories which may not attend the ones that came out of russia specifically but it is the climate of fake news that now we're all grappling with, how to parse through. >> host: let me ask, did any of the numbers of the committee expressed any doubt about trump's worthiness about u.s. intelligence that we've seen being expressed by president-elect donald trump? >> guest: it's interesting because, and i will extrapolate beyond the content of the

commitment because it was pretty respectful, discussions with intelligence chiefs since they were sitting right there in front of them. what i have been hearing across the board in congress is that you have a lot of members pretty much all of them except maybe a small handful saying of course i trust these people, they are the best among us. of course i believe in intelligent. i think it's right. but they stopped short, a number of republicans stopped short of one point, which cia and the fbi have assessed that the reason that russia got involved with these hacks related to the election, the dnc, john podesta, et cetera was trying to assist trump and assist the chances of winning. they say they don't know whether it worked. it's not many please vote for hacking election machines but they said that was the purpose pickup on republicans will say of course i trust the intelligence community but i don't trust that. there's this dichotomy.

how far does your trust go in their assessment or a lot of them are drawing the line at the point at which this becomes clearly political. the thing that is clearly political the intelligence community is making a political statement but it has political implication when you start saying well maybe they got involved because they're trying to advance trump's chances but that is something a lot of gop members, they just can't sit with. >> host: okay, tranfour, thank you for joining us today. >> guest: thank you. >> if any news results from president-elect trump's briefing with intel officials this morning we will have it for you here on the c-span networks. we are live from the school counselor of the year award ceremony taking place in his room of the white house. this is not only the day to recognize the winter but it's also likely this morning michelle obama his final speech as first lady. this is an event that wasn't issued by the first lady in 2015. the award today goes to terri tchorzynski from a technical school in battle creek, michigan. should start shortly.

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