Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke says he withdrew from Homeland Security post

Michelle Liu

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. has withdrawn his name for an assistant secretary position at the Department of Homeland Security — a job he said a month ago he had accepted.

A DHS spokesman on Sunday confirmed that Clarke was no longer being considered for a position within the department, according to the Associated Press.

"We wish him well," the spokesman told the AP.

Clarke formally withdrew from consideration of the job late Friday by notifying Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, according to a statement from Craig Peterson, a close adviser to the sheriff.

"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," Peterson said in the statement.

"Sheriff Clarke told Secretary Kelly he is very appreciative of the tremendous opportunity the secretary was offering, and expressed his support for the secretary and the agency," the statement continued.

Trump met with Clarke during his Wisconsin stop in Milwaukee Tuesday, Peterson said, when they talked about alternative roles for Clarke.

DHS spokesman to The Associated Press on Sunday: ‘Sheriff Clarke is no longer being considered for a position within DHS. We wish him well.’

Clarke's withdrawal from consideration for the Homeland Security job was first reported by the Washington Post.

At least publicly, the job had never been offered. And as of Friday, Clarke had not resigned from his sheriff's post.

Clarke had said then he would work in the department’s Office of Partnership and Engagement as a liaison with state, local and tribal law enforcement and governments. It would be an extension of the role Clarke has already taken on as a defender of police on media outlets like Fox News and would follow the campaigning he did for Trump around the country last year.

But when Clarke put out the news of his appointment on his own last month, it quickly drew a rebuke in an agency tweet that said “no such announcement” had been made. Agency spokeswoman Jenny Burke repeated the language of the tweet almost word for word Friday, the Journal Sentinel reported Saturday.

“The position mentioned is a secretarial appointment. Such senior positions are announced by the department when made official by the secretary,” Burke said in an email. “No such announcement with regard to the Office of Partnership and Engagement has been made.”

Clarke was expected to start a job with the department at the end of June. But a source close to the administration told the Washington Post that Clarke's appointment was subject to delays that spurred his withdrawal.

Another source told the Journal Sentinel that the sheriff attended the Tuesday night fundraiser that Trump hosted for Gov. Scott Walker at the Hyatt Regency in Milwaukee.

That source said Clarke was conspicuously seen asking administration officials about talking to Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff and a former state Republican Party chairman. The source did not see whether Clarke and Priebus eventually talked.

Clarke and the Milwaukee County Jail that he oversees have faced controversy.

An inquest jury last month found probable cause to charge five corrections officers, a jail lieutenant and the jail’s former commander with abuse of an inmate stemming from the April 2016 death of Terrill Thomas. Thomas died from dehydration after he went without water for seven days because of blunders by jail staff.

The jury’s findings were advisory and it is up to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm to decide whether to charge anyone.

Witnesses at the inquest said jail staff turned off the water in Thomas’ solitary confinement cell, then forgot to turn it back on. During the seven days Thomas went without water, officers failed to get him medical help.

Prosecutors have said Thomas’ mental illnesses — he suffered from bipolar disorder and was in the throes of a breakdown — prevented him from asking for help. Other inmates have said they asked jail staff to help Thomas.

Clarke has made few comments about the case nor have any administrative changes been made at the jail. He has criticized the news media for failing to report on the separate case involving Thomas, who was in the jail after allegedly confessing to shooting a man in the chest and later firing two shots in the Potawatomi casino.

In addition, testimony was taken this month from a 19-year-old woman who sued Milwaukee County, alleging she was raped multiple times in the jail by a guard in 2013 and was later shackled to her hospital bed while she gave birth.

Last month, the Naval Postgraduate School removed Clarke’s 2013 master’s thesis from its website and said it was reviewing his work after CNN reported the thesis included large sections that matched the work of others word for word. There were no quotation marks around the passages, but the sources were cited in footnotes.

Clarke has said CNN has exaggerated the importance of what he calls “a formatting error.”

Also, county auditors were looking into allegations of waste and fraud involving Clarke for his handling of an incident at Mitchell International Airport after his run-in with a 24-year-old Riverwest man on a Milwaukee flight earlier this year. Clarke had deputies escort the man out of the airport.

Auditors put their investigation on hold when it appeared Clarke was going to take the Homeland Security job.