Thursday 12 June 2008

Obama’s Top Vetter Resigns


By Kate Phillips


James A. Johnson, a leading member of the vice-presidential search team for Senator Barack Obama, quit his post with the campaign today after he and the campaign came under sustained Republican fire in the last several days for several favorable loans he had received.

“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,” Mr. Obama said in a statement released by his campaign. “We have a very good selection process underway, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process.”

Mr. Obama’s rival, Senator John McCain, and the Republican party had been hammering away at mortgages Mr. Johnson received from Countrywide Financial, a troubled mortgage lender. The loans were first disclosed by The Wall Street Journal last Saturday. Day after day, both the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee issued release after release criticizing Mr. Obama’s connections to Mr. Johnson.

In some ways, the former chief executive of the Fannie Mae Corporation represented the type of Washington figure the campaigns have tried to keep a distance from as they both tried to rid their campaigns of ties to Washington lobbying ties. In addition, the McCain campaign reminded the media and others that Mr. Obama had repeatedly criticized this particular mortgage company during his primary campaign.

Bloomberg News posted this statement from Mr. Johnson today: “I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort. I believe Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime.'’

Mr. Johnson, 64, said that he had done nothing wrong, saying “blatantly false statements and misrepresentations'’ had been written about him.

Just yesterday, Mr. Obama had dismissed the notion that Mr. Johnson’s business dealings should have received more scrutiny before he joined the search team, whose leading members also include Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder.

Earlier today, on a conference call with Obama campaign staff, Senator Kerry was asked about Mr. Johnson. Our colleague John Broder passed along Mr. Kerry’s remarks:

Jim Johnson is a very experienced, very discreet, very capable individual who is performing a voluntary function without pay, without any interest. He’s not seeking a job and, you know, he is acting completely independently to gather information about somebody. And that’s it. That is the full measure of this and it seems that this is one of those sort of Washington grab stories where people try to make something out of something it’s not.”

He has proven himself someone who has great skill in gathering that information and keeping it private.” Referring to the 2004 vice presidential vetting he performed for Mr. Kerry, he said, “There were no leaks from my process and he was handling unbelievably sensitive information.” He added, “He did an outstanding job in that capacity and I have no complaint about what he did for me.”

Mr. Johnson had just visited with top Congressional leaders to discuss the search matters earlier this week.

From : nytimes

1 comment:

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