White House says some members of infrastructure advisory council resign

[August 23, 2017]  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some members of a White House infrastructure advisory council have resigned, the White House said on Tuesday, days after President Donald Trump's response to violence at a rally by white nationalists in Virginia prompted business leaders and cultural figures to quit other panels in protest.

Trump last week disbanded two business advisory councils after several chief executives resigned in protest over his remarks blaming the violence on anti-racism activists as well as white nationalists.

In a statement on Tuesday, the White House did not give a reason for the resignations from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council and said the panel met on Tuesday with the majority of its members. It did not specify how many members quit.

"We can confirm that a number of members of the NIAC who had been appointed under the previous administration have submitted their resignation," the statement said.

Trump, commenting on the Aug. 12 rally organized by neo-Nazis and other white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman was killed when a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters, said last week that there were "very fine people" on both sides.

Trump dissolved the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum on Aug. 16. Sixteen members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities also resigned on Friday in protest.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Mohammad Zargham)

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