Embattled Obama Adviser Steps Down

"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."

When asked about the controversy yesterday, Sen. Obama initially tried to defend Johnson, saying that the members of the running mate selection committee, "aren't folks who are working for me," and that the accusations against Johnson were part of a, "game that can be played," with members of the campaign and their associations. The McCain campaign jumped on those assertions, calling them, "preposterous."

Johnson was reported to have received special loan rates on loans totaling nearly $6.3 million from Countrywide under a program that granted special below market mortgages to friends of Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo. The loans were a problem for the Obama campaign because Sen. Obama has railed against Countrywide and its executives specifically as, "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and creating, helping create a home foreclosure crisis." Johnson's continued presence on the campaign would have called Obama's credibility on the mortgage issue into question, and it was only a matter of time before he was pushed out once the information about his special mortgage dealings was made public.

Johnson is the third high-level Obama staffer to leave the campaign amidst controversy after initially being defended by Sen. Obama. Samantha Power left the campaign after a British television interview in which she called Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster," while Sen. Obama's Middle East adviser Robert Malley was similarly let go after reports that he had been regularly meeting with Hamas officials surfaced. In each case, Sen. Obama first decried the questions about the controversies as a distraction before sacking the offending staff members.