>> People on both sides of the political aisle are calling out President Donald Trump's pardons for those charged in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

More than 1500 people received a full complete and unconditional pardon from the president last week.

And critics say Trump's actions could potentially send a dangerous message.

Here with more is Robert Pape, political science professor at the University of Chicago, terrorism specialist founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and threats.

And he's in the studio with U.S.

Professor, welcome back.

As always.

So what does this action granting clemency 1500 J 6 defendants?

What does that say to people who believe in using violence to achieve their political goals.

>> It tells them that as long as you're doing it for the president's goals, he's got your back.

This is profoundly concerning profoundly dangerous as we go forward.

We are are ready in a tinderbox of the country over the last few years.

We haven't just had January 6.

We've had assassination attempts against Nancy Pelosi say once with weapons trying to get into Barack Obama's Washington, D.C., home.

We've had 2 assassination attempts against Donald Trump just this week.

2 people have been picked up because they made assassination threats against Donald Trump.

So this is an ongoing problem.

And in the midst of this, the president has used the power of his office to a gym 8, a vast political violence against the U.S. Constitution and more than that 2 way to set forth hundreds of people.

Who are dangerous.

And and this this one is different.

This executive order is different from the couple of 100 others that he signed because >> the president has 48 cannot be challenged in court.

The president issued 26 orders on Monday.

His first day.

>> This is the one the most important one where there is no court challenge.

There is no possibility of pushback.

This is where the president has complete and full authority and discretion and he has used that power in order to Ruiz literally hundreds of people who were convicted of political violence, hundreds of people who weren't just a problem in the past but pose a danger going forward.

>> Enrique Tarrio, former proud boys leader.

He was among those who was pardoned.

Here's a little bit of what he has said.

>> President Trump said that he was going to view these cases, the nature of these cases on a case-by-case basis.

And I think he thoroughly did.

People who put their hands on a police officer should get charged with whatever it is, whether its assault on a police officer.

that's not where the problem in these cases like the problem is on these cases live the miscarriage of justice and how it was performed in these cases in DC.

>> Okay.

So a lot of questions in this entire thing about the criminal justice system will come back to that in a second.

But you have review these cases on a case-by-case basis.

What did you find?

I've reviewed all of the 1600 cases we've been doing this at our research center at the University of Chicago Project on security and threats with research teams.

>> Reviewing all over 100,000 court documents.

The key thing to know is that not just in a few cases, but in.

Case after case after case there is a voluminous photographic evidence of the individuals directly involved in the violence.

Now, the worst of those are directly assaulting police officers or using polls against police officers or other ways Shields.

However.

The others, even though they're only convicted for misdemeanors.

What counts is a misdemeanor here is you are using violence against a police officer and I 3 feet away and saying go get out.

You get assault for pulling of a police and you get the misdemeanor.

We are both encouraging that and we are overwhelming.

The Capitol Hill police.

So the idea that these are grandmas or tourists, the public needs to know that besides the 1600, there were another 400 cases, the ground laws and the tourists that the Department of Justice chose not to prosecute.

So this is not a case of where there's all these people who are no, no, no.

people doubt which I can understand why they would in today's world, our center is issue just recently to reports Chark full of this photographic evidence case by case by case this also, you know, brings up the question of for whom the criminal justice system works and how it works.

>> And what the president's pardon says about the efficacy about the criminal justice system and its validity.

If a president can just come in and write about 1500 convictions.

>> What this says on top of the pardons by President Biden is that we have politics now at the center of our criminal justice system.

We have not pardons being used to commute sentences because those somebody's been in prison for 30 years for a drug offense.

This is going way beyond that.

And in this case with President Trump's pardons, this is the first time in American history and the first time in the West the chief executive officer of a Western democracy has used the power of his or her office 2 free criminals who have been convicted of political violence and who pose on going threat.

Let me give you one example.

I could, which is Cleveland, Meredith, he's not a proud boy.

He's not an oath keeper.

He wasn't even convicted of assaulting police officer.

You know what he did?

He arrived at the Capitol with his AR 15, 1000 rounds of armor piercing ammunition.

He didn't make it into the building, but he stayed for 2 days to Hunt.

Nancy Pelosi can, as he directly said to put a bullet in here.

Her dog.

That is the kind of person that we are setting free and that person can now go by AR 15 and those 1000 rounds of armor piercing ammunition what we you argue for a national campaign to thwart political violence.

What does that look like?

What we need is a new more innovative national conversation on political violence.

>> Too often what we see is very much like a school shooting.

There's instance, a political violence and we talk about it for a week or 2.

It's mostly in what we call now the legacy media and I'm on the legacy made and then we move on to something else.

Well, at the University of Chicago Project on security and threats.

We are now actively developing a major national social media campaign that will operate on a daily basis because we have the voluminous content.

We have an ongoing need to have a sustained conversation and we need to use the new approaches.

We continue to be stuck in the technology of 2030 years ago.

We need to be able to communicate with the public in new ways.

And this is part of the dissemination now of scholarship and research.

Okay.

More to come on that.