White House officials said Sunday that the presidential environmental adviser Van Jones resigned this weekend of his own accord, a move resulting from a furor over his fiery remarks about Republicans and his signature on a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.
White House officials never rose to defend the aide, a prominent San Francisco community activist, and took pains over the weekend to distance themselves from Jones' past statements and decisions about his employment status.
Responding to a firestorm that raged almost entirely on conservative talk shows and Web sites, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday that Jones made his own decision to leave, but he commended him for the departure.
Jones issued a statement decrying "lies and distortions" and a "smear campaign" that had been waged against him by the right.
But, despite his defiance, Jones had been forced to apologize in recent days for some of his past statements, including a fiery speech shortly before his appointment posted on YouTube in which he described Republicans as "a--holes."
The controversy began bubbling to the surface during the past week, as conservative talk show hosts such as Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity homed in on Jones as the latest example of a "radical" associate of Obama.
In accepting Jones' resignation over the weekend, White House officials in effect acknowledged that the president could ill afford such damage as he was already struggling to win congressional support for a health care overhaul.
