Thursday, Clarke announced he was taking a job with the Trump administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security. He said he will act as a liaison between DHS Secretary John Kelly and state and local officials. His position has not been confirmed by DHS.
The outspoken Milwaukee sheriff first gained national attention during the riots in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer. Clarke criticized President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for playing racial politics with the events in Ferguson. The sheriff went on to become a strong supporter of Donald Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer.
In 2013, Clarke received a master’s degree in security from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California. His thesis was entitled, “Making U.S. security and privacy rights compatible.” On Saturday, CNN’s KFile reported there were at least 47 instances of plagiarism in the thesis. The cable network reported some of the plagiarised passages were taken from ACLU reports, the 9/11 Commission Report, a Washington Post article and a Pew Research Center report.
As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Clarke credited the information he used in footnotes but quoted passages verbatim without the use of quotation marks. Under the guidelines of the school, if passages are quoted verbatim, no matter what length these passages are they “must” be set off in quotation marks.
After the allegations were revealed, Clarke took to Twitter and called reporter Andrew Kaczynski a “political hack” and “a sleaze bag.” The sheriff tweeted plagiarism is the reporter’s MO; he did it to Rand Paul and Monica Crowley as well.
Ample evidence of my previous tweet on KFILE. Guy is a sleaze bag. I'm on to him folks. SheriffClarke) May 20, 2017
This KFILE oppo research MO is to accuse plagiarism. I’m next. Did it to Rand Paul, Monica Crowley et al. SheriffClarke) May 20, 2017
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel, Clarke said, “Only someone with a political agenda would say this was plagiarism.” A spokeswoman for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said Clarke said the sheriff followed the rules when he did his paper.
After the CNN report, the Naval Postgraduate School removed Clarke’s thesis from its website. saying it did so at the school’s discretion. The school is investigating the allegations of plagiarism.
