[JURIST] White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove [official profile] announced Monday that he will resign his position effective at the end of August [press conference transcript]. Rove said in an interview [text] with the Wall Street Journal that he first indicated last year that he planned to depart from the administration and that he plans to write a book about his experiences in the Bush White House. He does not plan to work for any candidate in the upcoming 2008 presidential election, according to White House press secretary Tony Snow. AP has more.

Rove, a former campaign strategist for President George W. Bush often credited with leading Bush to victory in the 2000 election, has been involved with several administration scandals recently. In the US Attorney firings scandal [JURIST report], an e-mail conversation [text] released by the US Department of Justice revealed that Rove originally suggested firing all 93 US Attorneys [JURIST report] in January 2005. Earlier this month, Rove refused to testify [JURIST report] in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the committee's seventh hearing [witness list] on the firings. Rove was also implicated in the CIA leak scandal [JURIST news archive], when former CIA operative Valerie Plame [Washington Post profile] asserted in a lawsuit [JURIST report] that Rove and other administration officials violated her rights to privacy, free speech, and equal protection under the US Constitution by conspiring to expose her, threatening her career and endangering her family. In 2006, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak revealed [column; JURIST report] that Rove was one of two secondary sources who confirmed that Plame was employed by the CIA and helped initiate her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson's 2002 mission to Niger. In 2005, US Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald [official website] conducted an investigation [JURIST report] into Rove's role in the CIA leak case and whether Rove tried to conceal his conversation with a TIME magazine reporter a week before Plame's identity was revealed. Fitzgerald did not file criminal charges against Rove and Plame's lawsuit was dismissed last month.