Merrick Garland to our rescue

Re “Merrick Garland could cause a few headaches for President Biden,” Opinion, Feb. 18

Investigating prior violations of a previous administration might seem like political retribution to supporters of former President Trump, but a failure to perform a forensic investigation of a violent, bloody insurrection by domestic terrorists, which may have been aided and abetted by political figures, would be inviting an even worse threat to our national security.

Our lackadaisical and naive assumption that we are a nation of well-meaning patriots and law-abiding citizens who simply disagree sometimes has been debunked. Additionally, any failure to learn how this happened and who was involved will leave us with a political system in which violent and bloody insurrection attempts are now on the table.

Merrick Garland, President Biden’s attorney general pick, should know this and act accordingly. Dan Mariscal

Montebello

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strongly castigated Trump following his impeachment trial, saying: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”

In his column about Garland, Harry Litman neglected to mention the irony that McConnell is implicitly calling for the prosecution of Trump by the Department of Justice, which most likely will be headed by Garland, the very person for whom McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court for almost a year. What cynical hypocrisy! Dan Caldwell

Malibu The writer is a professor of political science at Pepperdine University.