Republicans on Jan. 6 committee

Re “Enabling a coup by sitting out,” letters, June 12

A reader complains about how the membership of the Jan. 6 committee was established. That’s not the first time this point has been raised. Even columnist

Nicholas Goldberg, a liberal as far as I can tell, has commented on that.

How the committee was constituted matters only if one believes that who is listening to the testimony could change the content of that testimony. For example, former Atty. Gen. William Barr told a Democrat-dominated committee that he told former President Trump the election fraud allegations were nonsense (using a more colorful term). Would his testimony have been different if there were more Republicans, or different Republicans, on the committee?

The suggestion just highlights the Republicans’ preference for sycophants over truth tellers. Or perhaps the theory is that the Trump Republicans, by their presence on the panel, could intimidate witnesses into lying. What good would that do the country? June Ailin Sewell

Marina del Rey

A reader seems upset that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) rejected Republicans offered by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for the Jan. 6 committee. He said, “Her action is akin to the prosecuting attorney selecting the defense counsel in a criminal trial.”

First of all, the Jan. 6 investigation is not a trial.

She has no obligation to put known troublemakers on the committee.

Second, what does the letter writer think about Republican senators as “jurors,” preventing a conviction in the two Trump impeachment trials? Those were actual trials. Sherwyn Drucker

Winnetka