Opinion: Merrick Garland wants to follow a process. Trump wants to blow it up

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, July 23, 2022. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

Calls are growing louder for the U.S. Department of Justice to indict former President Trump, and that’s understandable. Personally, few things would give me more satisfaction right now than to see Trump in an orange jumpsuit, finally held accountable for the innumerable accusations of fraud, violence and plain indecency that have followed him throughout his life. This feeling only intensified after Thursday’s hearing by the House Jan. 6 committee, which laid bare the ex-president’s three hours of excruciating inaction as the U.S. Capitol was sacked.

But wanting to see Trump arrested and tried is a lot easier than looking at the evidence and making the decision to charge him. The latter, as our legal affairs columnist and former U.S. attorney Harry Litman writes, is the decision faced by Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, and it’s clear the Justice Department he leads doesn’t have enough to secure conviction even as the House Jan. 6 committee paints a damning portrait of Trump:

“Within its brief, the Jan. 6 House Select Committee has done a splendid job. It has given the country a fighting chance at having an official chronicle of the many schemes that together make up Trump’s sinister undertakings between the 2020 election and its certification in Congress.

“But it will take more than a simple handoff of the committee’s findings to the Justice Department to set up a successful prosecution of Trump and his cronies....

“Unless and until Garland succeeds, Trump, by virtue of the committee’s outstanding work, may stand guilty in the public’s mind and in the judgment of history, but there’s no holding him criminally accountable in a court of law.”

It’s the “guilty in the public’s mind” that gives me pause. As we were often reminded during the ex-president’s two impeachments, guilty in a court of law is a higher standard than guilty in a political sense, and Trump’s successful avoidance of accountability during his term in office — to say nothing of his cultish grip on supporters — represents a failure of our political system. If the bar for criminal accountability is higher, those of us who dream of Trump in an orange jumpsuit must ask ourselves, especially after reading Litman’s column: How can we be so sure of a conviction?

As for the argument that Garland needs to indict Trump now as a way to show no one is above the law, and that allowing him to remain free only emboldens him to continue gaming the system, I’ll say this: Authoritarians have always exploited loopholes in the system that exist only because people like Trump are shameless enough to bore them. In a world where everyone respected the rule of law, some of these loopholes would be signs of a system’s strength — that no matter how tempting bending the rules to catch the bad guy might be, we always stick to the procedures that do the most good for the most people. I can only guess that a lifelong devotion to procedure, the kind that attempts to strip emotion from seeking justice, guides Garland now.

People like Trump see the Garlands of the world as suckers because of their devotion to a process meant to ensure fairness, even if it means they lose. We saw what Trump was willing to do avoid losing, violating a centuries-old procedure that has ensured the peaceful transfer of power between presidents.

People like Garland understand the importance of following a process. Much as throwing the book at Trump would bring endless satisfaction, I’m fine following Litman’s advice, giving Garland the benefit of the doubt (for now) and hoping his Department of Justice succeeds in building a case against the former president.

And then indict him for God’s sake.

A mask mandate may soon be back in Los Angeles County, which will change my life not one bit. I’ve been masking indoors since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first told us to in April 2020, even as mandates have been rescinded, reinstated and rescinded again. Dr. Nina Shapiro, writing on the op-ed page, says she has remained similarly and steadfastly masked and welcomes the mandate’s return. Editorial writer Karin Klein says this is no big deal: “The people of L.A. County know how to do masks and still go about normal life. We’ve got this.”

Imagine having the singular ability to do something about climate change, and deciding not to. That’s what Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) did when he torpedoed another effort by Democrats to fight global warming. Says the Times editorial board: “It should be clear by now that Manchin has no intention of acting in the public interest and cares more about retaining his position of power than the viability of our planet. Should we have expected more from someone who has made a fortune from the burning of coal and receives more campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry than any other senator? L.A. Times

Another view on Manchin. Columnist Jonah Goldberg says Manchin is more in tune with voters’ wishes than his progressive critics: “Democrats kept pushing massive spending even as inflation proved to be anything but transitory. Manchin opposed that spending because he feared its inflationary effects. Manchin won that policy argument, but Democrats like [Sen. Bernie] Sanders pretend Manchin is simply a party wrecker. Sure, Manchin is cozy with the fossil fuel industry, but you know what voters want? Cheaper fossil fuels.” L.A. Times

Congress should pass a federal right to contraception, and we really need it now, says the editorial board: “Contraception is recognized internationally as preventive healthcare and an essential tool for women to plan the course of their lives. But as we have learned in the last month, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has no problem overturning precedents. Alarmingly, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, urged the court to reexamine Griswold as well as the 2015 Obergefell decision granting same-sex couples the right to marry and the 2003 Lawrence decision that overturned laws prohibiting gay sex. Given that the court just overturned Roe vs. Wade, it’s impossible to disregard the possibility that these other essential freedoms are now at risk.” L.A. Times

The U.S. needs to get a move on fighting monkeypox, especially after its failures with COVID-19 and AIDS. The editorial board spots missed opportunities: “The federal government and state and municipal health departments could have done more to stop the initial spread of monkeypox. Authorities missed the opportunity to educate the LGBTQ community about the risks during Pride Month festivities when public health messaging was low-key or missing altogether. The number of cases rose dramatically in the couple of weeks after those events. And healthcare providers have not received the kind of information on treatment protocols from the CDC that should have been readily available.” L.A. Times