Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is calling the resignation of controversial aide Jack Hunter a "mutual decision," despite Hunter's repeated statements that the resignation was his idea.
The senator made the comment to reporters Monday:
PAUL: This is true that he is resigning, and I think because of the views he had expressed before my employment, it became a distraction and it just wasn't going to work.
REPORTER: Did you ask him to resign?
PAUL: It was a mutual decision.
However, in a number of interviews, the controversial aide has claimed his resignation was his decision.
"This was completely my decision," Hunter told the Free Beacon.
Hunter also said it was his decision to resign in interviews with the Daily Caller and Slate's David Weigel.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Hunter's history of inflammatory statements, which included toasting the birthday of Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, on July 9. Paul and his office stood by Hunter after the story.
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Paul said he found many of Hunter's comments "absolutely stupid," but defended his aide.
"Are we at a point where nobody can have had a youth or said anything untoward?" Paul said in the interview.
As a South Carolina shock jock, Hunter, now 39, donned a luchador mask emblazoned with the Confederate flag. Hunter expressed pro-secessionist views, said a "non-white majority America would simply cease to be America," and compared Lincoln to Hitler.