Obama's environmental adviser resigned early Sunday following fierce criticism from Republicans. (AP Photo) Van Jones resigns amid controversy

The White House, in an unusual pre-dawn announcement Sunday, said its “green jobs czar” Van Jones would resign after fierce criticism from Republicans about some of his statements and associations prior to joining the administration.

While the job itself is not that high-profile — special adviser on green jobs — Jones’ departure from the position is the first real scalp claimed by the Republican right, which stoked much of the criticism of Jones.


Jones was under fire for his past affiliation with the 9/11 conspiracy “truthers” and for calling Republicans “a**holes” in a video before he was appointed to the Obama administration. Republicans had also begun using him to escalate criticism of the administration’s deployment of czars across the policy landscape, saying that they were being used to avoid Senate scrutiny of appointees.

More problematic for the White House, perhaps, was the fact that Jones’ controversial statements fit snugly into the narrative woven by some conservative critics of Obama as a dangerous leftist, a critique that goes back to the campaign and was based as much on his past work as a community organizer and associations with the likes of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers as on his policies.

Jones' roots in radical politics, and a spate of newly surfaced links Saturday documenting his advocacy for convicted cop killer and former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal — a death row prisoner who many in the activist left view as an unjustly convicted political prisoner — threatened to play into that narrative, which reached new heights this week when the chairman of the Florida Republican Party challenged the President’s plan to speak to schoolchildren across the country as part of a plot to “indoctrinate” them in “socialism.”

In a resignation statement early Sunday morning, 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."

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Van Jones' resignation was "a loss to the country."

“This guy is a Yale-educated lawyer, he is a best-selling authority about his specialty,” said Dean on "Fox News Sunday." “I think he was brought down. It is too bad. Washington is a tough place that way. It is a loss to the country.”

Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to which Jones was attached, accepted his resignation in a statement released early Sunday. "Over the last six months, he had been a strong voice for creating jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources," she said. "We appreciate his hard work and wish him the best moving forward."

There was no accompanying explanation on the unusual timing of the announcement, shortly after midnight on a Sunday morning before a holiday. Historically, the preferred White House time for potentially embarrassing announcements has been Friday evenings before holidays.

His affiliation with a 1990s anti-war group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement has opened him to accusations that he associated with Communists. And in 2004 he allowed his name to be put on a letter requesting an investigation into whether the Bush administration allowed 9/11 to happen as a “pre-text to war.” Jones said Thursday he never believed in this so-called “Truther” movement, issued an apology for his past remarks, and said in a statement that his involvement with 9/11 conspiracy theories "does not reflect my views now or ever."

While the Jones controversy appears to have gotten its momentum from conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, it spread rapidly into more mainstream channels.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), a top member of the subcommittee that oversees green jobs, had called for a congressional hearing on Jones.

Bond released a letter he wrote to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chairman of the Green Jobs and New Economy Subcommittee, saying Jones "is becoming increasingly erratic and unstable as reflected by incendiary comments and repugnant associations made public in recent days."

Bond said that Jones's membership in Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement shows his "Marxist" and "Leninist" roots. The group disbanded in 2002, and in a 2004 document entitled " Reclaiming Revolution," the group's former leaders described it as a "revolutionary cadre" and part of a "broader movement that would finally end the murderous reign of U.S. imperialism."

"Refusal to conduct an oversight hearing by the subcommittee would heighten concern over whether this administration is committed to mainstream, inclusive, positive leadership and policies," Bond wrote.

"Resigning was the right thing to do," said Dana Perino, former press secretary to President George W. Bush.

Perino, in a post at POLITICO Arena, said she was "curious how he made it that far into the administration when a Google search could have told you he believed that the Bush administration had allowed 9/11 to happen. It'd be like the Bush White House having a former Klansman or Holocaust denier in the West Wing."