[music] I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Robert Pape.

He is professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and he is the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Welcome, sir.

Thank you very much for having me.

Professor, we are anticipating the imminent pardons, commutations, clemency issued, to the insurrectionists, from January 6th and the violation of the US Capitol on that day.

What's your reaction to the potential or likely pardoning of some or all of those who trespassed and violated the Capitol that day Nothing has done more to legitimated political violence in the United States than January 6th.

There are other acts of political violence before January 6th, there are acts of political violence.

In fact, many acts of political violence after January 6th.

But what's important about January 6th is more than any other event.

January 6th has legitimated political violence in our country.

Now, to go further and to pardon those involved with January 6th would be the next major step in further legitimating political violence as a normal tool of politics in the United States.

For the people who would suggest that, there is, an inherent unfairness in the way that the January 6th rioters, insurrectionists were treated, compared to the way arsonists, criminal activity was treated in the summer of the pandemic.

In the Floyd protests.

What's your response?

And has your response changed to that?

Because we've heard this for two years now that the people who violated the Capitol were treated differently than people who violated mom and pop stores or for that matter, superstores in cities, during the summer of 2020.

There is no doubt that both the riots during the George Floyd protests.

And about 7% of the George Floyd protests were riots that, as you just said, were smash-n-grabs.

They also attacked police stations.

They attacked police cars.

There's no doubt that was bad violence.

There's also no doubt January 6th was bad violence.

The difference, though, is in the apples and oranges nature of the political goal, not just in the level of violence.

The political goal on January 6th was not simply to have graffiti in the capital.

It was not simply to rip up some papers.

It was not simply to break some windows here.

It was to literally stop the congressional proceeding that was ongoing at the time, with the entire both houses of Congress to stop that congressional proceeding from certifying the duly elected president of the United States, Joe Biden.

And, in fact, that assault on the Capitol had the effect of delaying that is causing that Congress to flee.

Many of them thinking they were fleeing for their lives, stopping that proceeding for about 12 hours.

True, they came back.

But that is a political goal.

Completely head and shoulders above the idea of making political points to defund the police.

Which, of course, are political goals.

So there's no doubt that what happened with the George Floyd riots was violent.

There's no doubt that it was political violence.

But all of those acts here, and there were many hundreds of those riots that happened, had zero ability to impact the transfer of power from one presidency to another.

And that, like you said, is a pretty objective assessment.

It's not even, maligning one class of people.

It's just saying that the basic function of what was accomplished or attempted to be accomplished in the case of January 6th is different.

They were both, in many cases, intentional disruptions of civil society.

But there's a difference between civil society and the functionality of one's government or democracy in the democratic process.

Does it matter to you, professor, that there might not have been the intentionality?

Or the malice on the part of some who were even violently breaking through the Capitol, that they wanted to play shaman, that they wanted to enact a kind of George Washington, we wish Donald Trump had been reelected in 2020, but we did not intend to, in the words of infamously, of a subset of the protesters, hang Mike Pence.

Right?

So is the way you look at these defendants differently if those, pardons are issued, when there can be more established proof that they were intentional in wanting to disrupt the political process or caused that harm versus, what would be more of a nuisance?

Still trespassing, still likely a federal crime.

But different intentionality.

So, at our project at the University of Chicago, The Chicago Project on Security and Threats, with large research teams.

We have reviewed the over 150,000 pages of court documents.

For the over 1500 defendants, who have been charged with offenses related to January 6th.

We've also looked at their social media.

We've also looked at, all the local news stories have been written about them, where the local reporters are interviewing their family, friends and acquaintances and doing follow up interviews with these folks and many, many, many hundreds of cases.

What you see in all of that mass of material, is there are literally many hundreds, I couldn't say all of them, who are making stated, their stated motive is to stop the certification to block the steal as they describe it, to specifically stop what they believed was an illegitimate president in President Biden from coming into office.

And they are saying this over and over and over again.

So we can't really say that the entire 2000 because about 2000 did go into the capital that day with that exact intention.

However, what happens here is basically three stages of the assault on the capital.

Stage one is where the massive crowd of many thousands breaks through violently the perimeter defenses.

Stage two is where, another massive crowds on both the east and the west wing of the Capitol break into the building itself.

That is breaking all the doors in the buildings to get in.

And then stage three is where they rush into, the building itself.

And in the later stages of stage three, here becomes more peaceful.

And the reason it becomes more peaceful is because the Congress has run away.

The building is now empty and there's nothing to protect anymore.

Well, those folks at the later stages, they were all there through the beginning.

Stage one.

Stage two.

It's not like a new group somehow was bused in.

So they saw what happened in stages one and stage two.

So they are coming into this and it is quite you know, it is possible a few of them didn't really understand that the Congress was there on January 6th.

That's maybe possible, but I think it's highly implausible that many people were misunderstood that, the fact of the matter is, even those who came in and were very, very peaceful, just kind of walking through theyre essentially occupying the building.

And there's no way that Congress was coming back to certify that election until they were gone from the building.

So it's not like Congress, a normal day in Congress where Congress is voting on the floor and there are tours kind of walking through.

No no no no, no.

This is a different story, because when those people here in that stage three are in the building, Congress is not coming back.

And so what I say here is this is just, it's a misunderstanding.

It's taking sort of some of the trees or the pieces of what happened and missing the holistic picture.

This was about storming the Capitol, as Trump said in his speech on the ellipse.

This was about coercing Congress to stop the certification.

He explained that in his speech.

So the idea that there's, you know, a large number of people that don't understand the political purpose.

It just kind of belies belief.

Trump himself is saying that, that that's what he wants to have happen, many times in his speech at the ellipse.

So I just don't think that that's really a very reasonable way to interpret this.

Even if there is some variation, and there's no doubt that there are some people who wouldn't do this unless there was already a crowd of 2000 to go along.

Right?

But that doesn't mean they didn't go along.

We just need to be clear.

You know, so if there is a riot and you're part of the riot and you're only going to do it if there's other 2000 people with you, you're still part of that riot.

Yeah.

And most of us felt violated on January 6th.

Even if we weren't partizans or, connected to the families of those being held hostage, in effect, or who had to escape violence.

So you're making a clear and fair point in re-establishing what was transpiring in an effort to, undermine that the fact based narratives of what we saw with our own eyes about, you know, what transpired.

The people who defend the insurrectionists or at the very least, want to bring another perspective to it, which might be a revisionist, fabricated and fictional perspective has to do with, these people were set up, they were egged on.

They were egged on, of course, by Donald Trump's own words and his... president elect Trump's words at the event that he organized.

That was the inciting act.

But the conservative media have, been trying to tell a story of being set up by the FBI.

I mean, if you read, President Trump's defenders online, they talk about this, this is the primary thing that they say that this was not an insurrection.

This was coordinated by, FBI or you know, somehow.

And that may be a conspiracy theory, but it also is what a lot of people say on social media now.

And my question to you is, is there any basis to these ideas?

What do you do about it?

Well, the big thing is to recognize that there's a fundamental problem with the entrapment claim.

The fundamental problem is that there's no reason to believe 120,000 people would have showed up at the ellipse at Trump's speech, or that 10,000 people would have stormed through the first barricades.

That stage one I was talking about, or that fully 2000 people would storm the Capitol simply because there's a couple of, FBI informants egging them on.

The bottom line is, let's even give them that's true.

Okay?

The problem here is this isn't an FBI entrapping three other people.

Okay.

So we have lots of cases, of FBI being accused of entrapping, say, this cell or that cell.

These are cases, where are you talking about the FBI entrapping maybe a few people.

Even there I'm not saying the facts really support it, but the bottom line is, this is not what that looks like.

And we know this because before January 6th, there were two rallies that had, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, presumably also FBI informants in them, in Washington.

One on, November 12th, one on December 14th that had between 5 and 10,000 people there on those days.

And there was no serious melees of violence.

There was no egging.

It just didn't happen.

And so it really took Donald Trump's tweets on December 19th, his “it will be wild” tweet to bring that massive number of people to Washington in the first place, many of them in busses with Stop the Steal banners in the busses.

Okay.

And then it's really Donald Trump telling them to fight like hell.

And you can see at about 12:15 when he says that, that's when the massive crowd at the ellipse funnels through Pennsylvania and Constitutional Avenue.

It's a bit like water going right at the Capitol.

And it takes 45.

It takes a while for those folks to make that walk.

But they're not doing that because there's somebody with the FBI and a bullhorn competing with Donald Trump at the ellipse.

Donald Trump is fully the most powerful actor on January 6th.

And by the way, that's what you would expect of the president of the United States.

You would expect he would get all the attention, and he did.

It was his, it's Donald Trump that made it possible that brought those people.

And it's Donald Trump's behavior that's fired them up and things are happening on the edges of this, no doubt about it here.

But they're just simply not important.

And we know because that stuff on the edges happened a month before and we don't even remember those events.

That makes sense.

The other point that has been made about the security protocol is that, the Capitol was not secured.

That's a point that's not really a controversial, conspiratorial one.

That's just a realistic point that whoever's responsibility was, whether it was the president of the United States, the speaker of the House or the Capitol Police, they all failed.

We know the staffing numbers now.

There were 200 Capitol Hill police.

With a little bit of augmentation from Washington City Police, from DC police, 200 on Capitol Hill grounds to secure the Capitol.

And that was basically the right number for the number of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, you expected ere about seven, 800.

So if this are only then a small number of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers doing this, those 200 police would have been more than sufficient to stop the problem.

The problem here was not that there were these outside instigators of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys.

They're the real problem or the FBI.

These 20 30 people maybe are the problem.

The problem is the massive mob -Right.

outnumbered the Capitol Hill police 58 to 1.

But in retrospect, if people were concerned that, the president was radicalizing his supporters to engage in a domestic terrorism act the number that should have been on people's radar was not the ones who were, demonstrable Proud Boys on the internet, but just every single person who showed up there who could be cajoled into trespassing or violating the Capitol.

In retrospect, that is quite right.

It would have been not just the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but everybody.

And also, I just want to point out that, again, with this research team, we have studied all of those who have been charged.

And there were, a little over 300 who were charged with violent offenses here, not just trespassing.

75% of those tried and convicted or pled guilty to the violent offenses here are not Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

They are doctors.

They are lawyers.

They are architects.

They are people living off of trust funds.

They are donors that went to the White House Christmas party just two years before.

The people who actually did the great bulk of the violence here were not the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

They were about 25% again, of the violent, individuals here, the violent individuals were overwhelmingly this other group, which is why Capitol Hill police, they weren't expecting it.

This was simply something beyond their imagination.

And Trump never said explicitly in his, remarks at the ellipse, march into the Capitol and interrupt the proceedings, right?

Otherwise, it would be an absolutely clear cut case.

The activity was a direct result of the incitement.

I agree that Trump does not actively say, he says march on the Capitol, he does say and he says he will be leading the march here.

He doesn't actually say use violence and so forth.

But he says you've got to fight like hell to show.

And he means, he says, to show the weak Republicans that they cannot steal this election.

-Right.

Understood.

And then as thats happening, by the way, there is audio of the crowd, as Trump is saying that literally at 12:16, there is, audio of the crowd saying storm the Capitol, right back in Trump's face, and he's repeating it back and forth with the crowd not storm the Capitol, but he's going back and forth, as Trump does in his rallies.

Trump is not ignoring his crowds and his rallies.

He is developing and egging on the crowds.

And that's what happened in this case, too.

So as they're, saying, storm the Capitol.

They then leave to start to storm the Capitol.

You see, so this is not, like a giant surprise of whats occurring here.

And we know that Trump is watching this happen, and then he goes back to the White House and he watches it all on TV.

So this is, again, the idea that somehow this is all coming as some sort of a giant surprise.

He tells people to remove the metal detectors because they may have weapons, but they're not going to hurt him.

So all of this is evidence to say this is not a situation where President Trump himself has no awareness of what's occurred.

Oh, of course, of course.

And the fact that any Republicans voted to, impeach and convict, is evidence, that this transcended party allegiance and, you point out that, youve studied the demographics, you say that, the people who attended the march, are much like the people, some of the people who were interviewed when there was the attempted assassination on President Trump.

People in the audience were doctors.

They were interviewed.

So...

Yes.

studying the demographics of the people who attended, what would you say that their economic status was?

The most important thing to know is that, of the roughly 1500 here that have been charged, only 10%.

11% are members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, other militias, violent militias.

And so the 90%, that or not, that's what made the storm a storm.

And the second most important thing to know is their economic profile.

Literally 50%, 49% of this group that stormed the Capitol were normal middle class and upper middle class Americans.

Practicing doctors at well-respected hospitals.

They are lawyers, practicing lawyers in well-respected upper class communities.

They are architects.

They're IT specialists.

They are corporate executives.

One was a State Department, political appointee with a top secret clearance.

You're saying approximately 50% of the, people arrested or the people who attended?

People were arrested.

So these are the people who are actually doing the storm.

And likely the majority of people who attended too, based on your analysis.

Well, likely the majority attending too.

Because we have to remember, these people have enough, economic ability to simply take off from work on a whim because Donald Trump tweet was only December 19th, and they had to be able to get to, Washington DC, coming from California, coming from Seattle, coming from all across the country.

And many of them stayed at the Willard Hotel, the Saint Regis Hotel.

These are the most posh hotels in Washington DC.

They were packed.

So, were not really talking about middle class, and thats kind of an obsolete term in America now, because there's the working class and then there's the rich.

Yeah.

So, youe saying that at least 50% of the people arrested and likely who attended January 6th, were upper class.

Upper middle.

I wouldn't necessarily go and say they were... Well, Im with Bernie Sanders that you cant use that.

but, they are people who are making, you know, $100,000 a year, $200,000 a year.

They are white collar.

They are business owners.

They are CEOs of fortune 500 companies.

All of them are not making millions of dollars a year.

But there are many, many who are making very comfortable.

One of them asked the judge if she could postpone her, court date because, she was taking her entire business, to their annual, week in Mexico as their benefit for working in her company.

She's staying at the Willard just to give you a sense of -the comfort level.

-So were bascially out of time.

but I need to ask you one last question.

The idea that President Trump is now serving again.

And he did incite, the people there, whether it was to incite them to trespass or incite them just to side with him in asserting that the election was illegitimate.

How do we think about the fact that this event occurred?

He was reelected.

And, a majority of Americans, either they don't blame him for what happened or it just doesn't matter enough to them.

Well, that is all true.

They have reelected Donald Trump by a majority of even the popular vote.

And what that has done is further legitimated the events of January 6th, because he announced for months he was going to pardon.

And he said all or nearly all of the folks on, who were involved in January 6th and he called them political hostages.

So he was reelected with all of this in full knowledge.

And what's happened is this has legitimated not just January 6th, but political violence in general in the United States.

We are now on the slippery slope where political violence is spreading from area to area to area.

We just had multiple, we had assassination attempts against Nancy Pelosi, a plot against, Barack Obama at his summer home.

Two assassination attempts against Donald Trump.

We have the murder of the healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.

And people are wondering, well, how is it we got all this political violence?

Well, what's been happening is the norm of restraint and violence has been eroded, and nothing has done more to legitimate political violence than January 6th, which was essentially instigate it by the sitting president of the United States, who's now been reelected and as one of his first acts, is going to pardon folks involved with January 6th.

And then we sit back and wonder, how did we get here to political violence?

That seems to be happening on almost a monthly basis.

Well, this is what happens when violence gets the mainstream.

Is your understanding that when the American people voted in November of 2024, they merely marginalize this as not important or that they reconsidered this, not domestic terrorism?

Which is it?

It was both.

Our polls show half of the Trump supporters thought the January 6th who stormed the Capitol stormed the Capitol are patriots.

So it's a combination of people who might have changed their mind about what happened that day and people who it might be, political violence.

And they may believe that he instigated it, but that wasn't a factor in whether they should vote for him.

There are some people who supported the violence itself, because they would rather have Trump as president than, support the, process... -No, that I understand.

But, Yeah.

-but it seems to me that the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump, they would not redefine or excuse the trespassing.

They just said they would essentially marginalize it.

No, no, they probably would just not even engage with it.

And they would talk about the border and other issues like that.

The economy, right.

But I'm just pointing out there's two pieces to Trump's support here.

One piece, though, is active support for what happened on January 6th.

And then the probably larger piece are those who would just, assume, turn away and try to not pay attention to it, here.

But they are ambivalent.

And the ambivalence here matter significantly because they are part of legitimating this event.

Understood, Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Thank you for your insight today.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

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