US President Barak Obama’s adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, Van Jones, has resigned from his position after claiming he was the victim of a “vicious smear campaign.”
In his resignation, Jones said: “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide,” he wrote. “But I came here to fight for others, not for myself.”
“What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual,” said
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, appearing on ABC’s “This Week.” “The president thanks Van Jones for his service in the first eight months, and helping to coordinate renewable energy jobs that are going to lay the foundation for our future economic growth.”
Gibbs added that President Obama and the Council for Environmental Quality accepted Jones’ resignation “because Van Jones, as he says in his statement, understood that he was going to get in the way of the President and ultimately this country moving forward on something as important as creating jobs in a clean energy economy.”