House Homeland Security Committee Democrats on Thursday urged Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly not to appoint Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke to a post at his agency.
“We understand that the Department [of Homeland Security] has yet to make an announcement about this position and strongly urge you not to consider Sheriff Clarke as candidate for this important office or any other within DHS,” they wrote in a letter to Kelly.
The group said that Clarke’s “troubling record” includes plagiarism allegations and “multiple inmate deaths” under his watch in Milwaukee County.
{mosads}“Taken together, they warrant not only his immediate disqualification from consideration, but an unequivocal response from the department stating that neither Sheriff Clarke nor anyone with a similar record would be considered for a secretarial appointment within DHS.”
Thursday’s letter was signed by Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, and 11 other Democrats.
Clarke said during a radio interview last week that he had accepted a job as assistant secretary of the DHS’s Office of Partnership and Engagement. However, the DHS said last week that the department has not made any announcement about Clarke’s potential position there.
Clarke said in an interview aired Monday that a CNN report that he plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis could sway President Trump against appointing him to a role at the DHS.
“This is about weakening, like I said, the support that I give and that I have with President Donald Trump and Secretary Kelly; it’s to weaken their resolve to hang in there with me,” he told radio host Joe Pags.
CNN on Saturday reported that Clarke plagiarized parts of his 2013 master’s thesis on U.S. homeland security.