Is Trump directly involved in the Dominion case? I thought that was just media outlets and a couple of Trump’s attorneys?
If it’s a question of executive branch privilege then, I would probably expect the Office of Legal Counsel to represent him.
If Garland was being accused of bribery, sexual harassment, or some such then, sure, he would need to hire his own lawyers (or, at least, he should hire his own lawyers). But if Congress is trying to impeach him for his professional, on-the-job choices then I would expect (and it would be reasonable for) the Executive Branch to allocate lawyers from some division to him. The White House Counsel is, I believe, reserved solely for the President and Vice President. I’m not seeing any other legal group, outside of that, that isn’t part of the DOJ. And, of departments within the DOJ that might be most on-point for such a legal fight, the group that specializes in Constitutionality and, thereby, impeachment legalities would look the most likely to me.
I don’t think that the OLC, traditionally, argues in court. They prefer to hang back and write opinion papers but, in this special case, I think that they’d end up on the front lines unless there is some smaller office in the DOJ, that I’m unaware of, specialized to defending the employees of the organization in court (which is quite possible). If that does exist, I’d probably expect them to still use the OLC as a primary research source.
Not yet.
Dominion has brought defamation lawsuits totaling well over a billion dollars against Trump associates – but not Donald Trump himself, or at least not yet.
C’mon, guys, get to it already!
My take on Garland is that he would like to follow the Rule of Law, but is concerned that if Trump is tried and found not guilty, it will establish a precedent where presidents can break the law because they know they won’t be prosecuted.
His fear of that consequence has been sufficient to prevent him from charging Trump. He seems not to realize that rather than risking the case where presidents act with impunity, his failure to act ensures that we’re already there.
Dominion had to have made their calculation already and decided it wasn’t worth it to pursue Trump personally. Wonder why?
They may figure that he doesn’t have any money.
Maybe they’re just taking the time to build a really, really, really good case… but that’s probably wishful thinking.
Or they have more than enough to go on with the much stronger cases they do have. Or Trump hasn’t personally said enough about them to reach the necessary threshold for defamation. Or they figure the cases they have will provide them with more evidence against Trump. Or they think it will be fun to make him sweat. Or…
Or they think Fox will turn around and sue Trump (if they lose), pointing to him as the one they relied on for their ‘reporting’.
Truly, there could be no sweeter schadenfreude than that.
I am fully prepared for that.
Trump was impeached twice for his (un)professional, on-the-job choices and he had to hire outside counsel just like Clinton. I’m puzzled why you don’t think that would apply to Garland.
The most recent impeachment of a Cabinet member that I can find is for Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. He had to hire outside counsel. I acknowledge it was for corruption committed in his role as head of the War Dept. but I can’t find anything to suggest this would be different if it was for something else.
Anyway, I don’t wish to hijack this thread further with this topic. I suspect we will find out the answer to this soon enough whether it is Garland or one of the other members of the Biden Administration in the sights of the MAGA folk.
Non-political Schadenfreude: predicted track of Hurricane Nicole shows it heading pretty much directly for Mar-a-Lago. It’s almost enough to make you believe in divine power! 
Not to worry. He’ll draw a wall!
With a sharpie.
He might even do it today and not wait two weeks.
And the sharpie will pay for it.
Is the Sharpie cantaloupe-sized?
…offerred by someone with misty-eyed hope, penitence and obsequiousness?