White House mum on whether Rahm Emanuel should resign

The White House on Wednesday refused to say whether Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) should resign over his administration’s oft-criticized response to a police shooting involving a black teenager.

{mosads}Asked if President Obama’s former chief of staff should step aside from his current post, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said “that’s a decision for Mayor Emanuel and the voters of Chicago to make.”

“Obviously, the citizens of Chicago will have to determine who should be running the city, including evaluating his commitment over the long term” to implement reforms, Earnest said. “That’s why we have elections.”

The spokesman said Obama is “obviously aware of the quite intense national coverage of the events in his hometown” but said he was not sure whether the president had spoken to Emanuel in the past few days.

Obama returned on Tuesday from a climate conference with world leaders in Paris.

Anger has flared in Chicago after authorities released video footage of a white police officer killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, an black teen who was shot 16 times. It took 13 months for the city to publicly release video of the October 2014 shooting.

Emanuel has refused to step down amid heavy criticism of the city’s handling of the incident, which The New York Times editorial board has dubbed a “cover up.”

“We have a process called the election,” Emanuel said Wednesday during a Politico event. “The voters spoke. I’ll be held accountable for the decisions and actions that I make.”

Earnest praised Emanuel for pledging to pursue police reforms in response to McDonald’s death.

“What we did see from Mayor Emanuel in the news conference he held yesterday was a personal commitment to follow through on reforms he believes are needed within the Chicago Police Department,” the spokesman said.

Emanuel conceded Wednesday he made “mistakes” throughout the course of the investigation, suggesting that he could have released the recording of McDonald’s death sooner.

Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot McDonald, was charged with first-degree murder hours before the video was released. The FBI and Justice Department are also pursuing their own investigations of McDonald’s death.

Obama called the teen’s death “deeply disturbing” in a Facebook post last Wednesday but has otherwise been reluctant to speak out publicly about the incident.

Earnest said that Obama is “limited in what he can say publicly” about the incident due to the federal investigation, rejecting suggestions that his relative silence is an attempt to protect Emanuel.