The Prosecution Project (tPP)
The Prosecution Project (tPP) is a university-funded group that uses volunteer graduate and undergraduate students to research felony criminal prosecutions that involve political bias and extremism in the United States. 1 2 Results of its research are shared publicly and designed to be used to inform and shape public policy surrounding law enforcement and criminal justice. 1
Contents
Background
The Prosecution Project is a research platform that tracks and analyzes felony criminal cases that involve political violence, terrorism, hate or bias crimes, political protests, and extremism in the United States. Founded in 1990, the project tracks how criminal cases are prosecuted and expends no effort to track all acts of violence. The Prosecution Project identifies findings for scholars and policy makers and allows students to engage in research and acquire team building skills. Findings are available free online and open to the public. 1
The group develops and disseminates empirical findings on crime, criminal justice, and public policy. With research and student engagement, it examines how political violence is prosecuted. The organization created a previously nonexistent public database that informs law enforcement, judicial policy, and criminal justice. 3
It claims to be the product of nearly 300 research volunteers and hosts 40 to 45 undergraduate graduate students, journalists, medical professionals, service workers, and people from nonprofits annually. 2
Activities
The Prosecution Project provides a public dashboard that allows users to filter, query, and download its data. Visualizations, including specialized tabs for information related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot and the 2020 George Floyd protests, have been created. The Prosecution Project uses blog posts and student postings, as well as publishing books such as Prosecuting Political Violence: Collaborative Research and Method by Michael Loadenthal, to share its findings more broadly. 4 5 6 7
The group provided written testimony to the January 6 Select Committee on operational security practices of defendants. 2
It published a blog of key findings titled “Locating Extremists Where They Strike: The Influence of Ideology and Geography on Target Selection” in a 2021 analysis. Of a sample of 611 cases, right-coded cases made up over half of the sample and were spread uniformly across the United States, while left-coded cases were concentrated on the West Coast and targeted private sites; Salafi/Jihadist/Islamist cases were overrepresented at four times their share of the population and clustered in high-density urban areas. 8
Controversies
The Prosecution Project has been accused of “doxxing” January 6 defendants, which it has denied. The project stated that it simply collates publicly available information and does not identify unnamed individuals. 2
The group has been accused of being left-leaning based on a chapter published by Michael Loadenthal titled “The Prosecution Project: Data-driven anti-fascism in a post-truth, pro-fascist era” and board member Emily Gorcensk’s work exposing far-right extremism. It has denied having ideological bias. 9 10
The project removed the names and biographies of its volunteers and undergraduates involved in the project in the Fall of 2025 after they received online threats and communications involving sexual violence. 2
People
Michael Loadenthal is the founding director of the Prosecution Project and assistant professor of research with the Center for Cyber Strategy and Policy at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. He is also the executive director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association at Georgetown University. Loadenthal authored the book The Politics of Attack in 2017. 11 12
The Prosecution Project’s national advisory board includes Gary Ackerman, Peter Bergen, Michael Boyle, Kurt Braddock, Emily Gorcenski, John Horgan, and others. 10