Sheriff David Clarke Won’t Be Joining The Trump Administration After All

Sheriff David Clarke has withdrawn his application for a job in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The controversial, no-nonsense Milwaukee County lawman who is a vocal Trump supporter and police champion, as anyone with or near a television knows, announced a few weeks ago that was going to D.C. to work for the Trump administration effective as of the end of this month.

If he had taken the position offered to him, Clarke would have become an assistant secretary in DHS, serving as the go-between for local and state law enforcement agencies and their federal counterparts, who sometimes feel ignored by Washington, he stated at the time. The job would have been based out of the DHS Office of Partnership and Engagement.

According to the Washington Post, the sheriff — who is up for reelection in November 2018 assuming he is also taking back his resignation as sheriff submitted to Gov. Scott Walker — is apparently staying put in Wisconsin.

“‘Late Friday, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. formally notified Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly that he had rescinded his acceptance of the agency’s offer to join DHS as an assistant secretary,’ said Craig Peterson, an adviser to Clarke. ‘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.'”

Eve though the DHS job did not require U.S. Senate confirmation, the Washington Examiner notes that Democrats opposed Clarke’s appointment because of his criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement, among other liberal causes.

Clark also stands accused of supposedly plagiarizing portions of his Naval Postgraduate School master’s thesis, an allegation which the school is currently looking into. As sheriff, David Clarke is in charge of the Milwaukee County jail; local authorities are currently reviewing incidents where inmates died while in custody there.

Clarke and President Trump had a sit-down last Tuesday in Wisconsin, during which “they discussed other roles in which Clarke could support Trump,” the Post added, which could be in or outside of government. As some political observers have contended, Clarke could be even a more effective Trump surrogate without the constraints of a government bureaucracy.

A former city of Milwaukee police commander, Clarke, a Democrat, has been county sheriff since 2002 and was reelected to his fourth term in that job in 2014. He is an outspoken supporter of Second Amendment rights and firearms training and was a fierce critic of the Obama administration, particularly in what he claimed was its war on police.

He was previously a patrolman, a homicide detective, a lieutenant of detectives, and a captain on the Milwaukee PD. Among 10 applicants, Clarke was originally appointed sheriff by then-Gov. Scott McCallum after the incumbent accepted a pension sweetener.

As alluded to above, Clarke is a foe of the Black Lives Matter movement, previously describing it as, among other things, a Frankenstein monster and a collection of misfits, and renaming it “Black Lies Matter.”

With his signature cowboy hat, Sheriff David Clarke found himself in the national spotlight as a law-and-order advocate with regular appearances on the Fox News Channel, CNN, and other media outlets, ever since advising his Wisconsin constituents several years ago in a series of viral ads to arm themselves against intruders rather than hiding under the bed and waiting for overworked, undermanned cops to arrive.

[Featured Image by Susan Walsh/AP Images]