‘Patriot’ Milwaukee Sheriff No Longer in Line for Trump Post

Clarke, a leading figure with the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Chief Association and vocal supporter of Donald Trump’s, had claimed he had been offered a job as an assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

There would have been a bit of irony if Clarke had joined senior federal law enforcement ranks because, as a CSPOA member, he espouses the notion that local sheriffs are the only real law enforcement under the Constitution.

However, no official announcement of Clarke’s appointment ever came from Homeland Security or its secretary, John F. Kelly. 

Shortly after Clarke made the announcement last month that he was joining the Trump Administration in Washington, CNN reported he had plagiarized sections of his 2013 master's thesis on national security. He also drew increased scrutiny for incidents at the Milwaukee County Jail, which he oversees as sheriff.

Five corrections officers and two supervisors are under investigation for the alleged abuse of a mentally ill inmate who was denied water in his cell for a week before dying of dehydration. And in another case, a 19-year old woman alleges she was raped in the Milwaukee jail by a guard and later was shackled to a bed when she gave birth.  She sued and was just awarded $6.7 million.

But it may well be that the plagiarism allegations — centering on the issue of honesty — were the chief obstacle to his appointment to a key position in the Trump Administration.

After the plagiarism issue was raised, the Naval Postgraduate School removed Clarke’s 2013 master’s thesis from its website, claiming it was “reviewing his work after CNN reported the thesis included large sections that matched the work of others word for word,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported this past weekend.

Clarke rebutted the plagiarism claim, saying CNN exaggerated the importance of what he called “a formatting error” in his master’s thesis.

Clarke showed up last week at a Republican fund-raiser in Milwaukee for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an event where the featured speaker was President Trump. The president reportedly met with Clarke during that stopover and discussed “alternative roles” for the sheriff. Then, three days later, Clarke announced he was “withdrawing his name” from consideration for the Homeland Security post.

“Sheriff Clarke is 100 percent committed to the success of President Trump and believes his skills could be better utilized to promote the president’s agenda in a more aggressive role,” a spokesman for the sheriff told the Milwaukee newspaper.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported over the weekend that Clarke’s appointment “had been subject to significant delays that contributed to his withdrawal.” No reason was given for those “delays” in his appointment.

Clarke’s public life as a prominent, elected law enforcement official has been riddled with his controversial claims. In 2015 he said a “war on cops” was being led by then-President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

An African-American himself, Clarke has called the Black Lives Matter movement “black slime” and “filth” that “needs to be eradicated from American society and American culture.”  He also has claimed the gay rights movement is part of a socialist agenda.

In 2016, Clarke offered vocal support for Ammon Bundy and other antigovernment Patriots and militia members who illegally took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and subsequently were indicted by the Justice Department.

When word broke this past weekend that Clarke wouldn’t be heading to Washington, D.C., by the end of this month, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele called on Clarke to resign as sheriff to allow the community “to turn the page.”

Clarke immediately fired back, saying he intended to remain as Milwaukee’s sheriff until his term expires in January 2019. He called the county executive a “little mouse.”