The head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential search team quit Wednesday amid allegations that he received sweetheart loans from a subprime mortgage lender criticized by Obama.
Jim Johnson, the former chairman of Fannie Mae, resigned just one week after being appointed by Obama. It was an embarrassing setback for Obama, whose appointment of Johnson oneday after clinching the Democratic nomination was widely viewed as his first major decision in the general election campaign.
“Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept,” Obama said in a prepared statement. It was an abrupt reversal for Obama, who on Tuesday scoffed at the idea that he should “vet the vetters” of his potential running mates.
“I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages,” Obama said during a news conference in St. Louis.
Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, said the “resignation raises serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment” because it shows “he will only make the right call when under pressure from the news media.”
“America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours,” Bounds added. “That’s not change we can believe in.”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton fired back: “We don’t need any lectures from a campaign that waited 15 months to purge the lobbyists from their staff, and only did so because they said it was a ‘perception problem.’ ”
Johnson issued a statement saying he was the victim of “blatantly false statements and misrepresentations.” He was apparently referring to a Wall Street Journal article on Saturday that said he may have received preferential loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., which is under federal investigation in the subprime mortgage crisis.
On March 31, Obama said of Countrywide: “These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home-foreclosure crisis.”
Sen. Richard Durbin, national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, praised Johnson’s decision “to take himself out of the line of fire,” adding, “He didn’t want the vice presidential process to be dragged down by questions and charges and countercharges.”
Emboldened by Johnson resignation, Republicans stepped up their attacks on a second member of Obama’s vice presidential search team, Eric Holder, who was deputy attorney general under former President Bill Clinton.
“Eric Holder was involved in a sweetheart deal which granted fugitive Marc Rich a controversial pardon from outgoing President Bill Clinton,” the Republican National Committee said in a statement.
The third and final member of Obama’s vice presidential search team is Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former President John Kennedy.
