White House Forced to Defend Obamacare Litigator

The White House has issued a statement defending Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, whose defense of Obamacare before the Supreme Court on Tuesday has been widely criticized.

“Verrilli looked lost on the most important day of oral arguments,” Politico observed.

“From the opening moments, he seemed flummoxed, repeating himself, coughing and stopping for water before he could deliver even the first full paragraph of his prepared remarks.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Verrilli’s performance was “a train wreck for the Obama administration.”

And Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein said Verrilli “lost big.”

But White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said in a statement Wednesday morning: “Mr. Verrilli is an extraordinarily talented advocate who possesses a sharp mind, keen judgment, and unquestionable integrity. He ably and skillfully represented the United States before the Supreme Court yesterday, and we have every confidence that he will continue to do so.”

Nevertheless, Verrilli’s efforts to defend Obamacare’s individual mandate before the high court were surprisingly inept, in the view of many legal observers.

“After all, Verrilli is the handpicked advocate for a president well-educated in the intricacies of constitutional law,” Politico noted. And the venue — where Verrilli has argued 17 times before — is a familiar one.”

Verrilli once clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, a longtime liberal on the court, and joined the Justice Department in 2009 as an associate deputy attorney general.

The 54-year-old Columbia graduate is a contributor to Democratic political campaigns, including Barack Obama’s first Senate bid. He was tapped to succeed Elena Kagan as solicitor general when she was named to the Supreme Court, and he was easily confirmed in June 2011.

Lyle Denniston, a court watcher for SCOTUSblog, told Yahoo News that Verrilli “did not give a crisp reply” when Justice Samuel Alito pressed him to state how far Congress can go in forcing people to purchase a product, like healthcare insurance, in order to regulate interstate commerce.

Denniston added: “When an argument develops a point that crucial, that is when a lawyer must be at the peak of performance.”

But Toobin declared that Verrilli did a “simply awful job” defending the individual mandate.

“He was nervous. He was not well-spoken,” Toobin said.

“The argument got off to a very bad start for the administration and it was really the liberal justices who carried the argument much more than the lawyer.”

And Adam Serwer wrote on Mother Jones magazine’s website: “Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.”