# David Clarke **David Alexander Clarke Jr.** (born August 21, 1956, Milwaukee) was Milwaukee County Sheriff from 2002 to 2017 and became, in the Trump era, the cowboy-hatted "America's sheriff" of conservative cable — a law-and-order surrogate who spoke at the 2016 Republican convention, was nearly given a Homeland Security post, and later called for a Proud Boys chapter in Wisconsin. He matters to this vault for two things: he was a confirmed member of the **December 2015 NRA delegation to Moscow** that [[Maria Butina]]'s group helped pay for, and he is a clean example of the sheriff-as-movement-celebrity pipeline that runs alongside the [[Constitutional Sheriff]] movement. ## Milwaukee County Sheriff (2002–2017) - Appointed in March 2002 by Republican Gov. Scott McCallum to fill a vacancy; won election that year and was re-elected in 2006, 2010 and 2014. He ran on the ballot as a Democrat but refused to join the state Democratic Party and aligned openly with Republicans. - **Jail deaths.** Four people died in his jail within six months, prompting a U.S. Justice Department inquiry. The best known was **Terrill Thomas**, 38, who died of dehydration in April 2016 after jail staff shut off the water to his cell for about a week (NPR says seven days; Wikipedia says six); the medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Three jail employees were convicted; Clarke was not charged and denied wrongdoing. Milwaukee County and its jail-health contractor paid Thomas's family **$6.75 million** in 2019. "He set the tone for how it operated and the buck stops with him," the family's lawyer said (NPR). - **Rhetoric.** Called Black Lives Matter "Black Lies Matter" and its activists "subhuman creeps" (2015); tweeted "Pitchforks and torches time" (2016); had his Twitter account briefly suspended in January 2018 after posting "Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD" about the media. - **Thesis.** CNN reported in May 2017 that his 2013 Naval Postgraduate School master's thesis failed to attribute sources at least 47 times; the school ruled the lapse unintentional and let him revise it and keep the degree (2018). - Resigned August 31, 2017. ## The Moscow trip (December 2015) Clarke was one of seven **confirmed participants** in the December 2015 NRA delegation to Moscow, alongside [[David Keene]], [[Pete Brownell]], Joe Gregory, Jim Liberatore and Arnold and Hilary Goldschlager, according to Sens. [[Ron Wyden]], Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse, who wrote to all of them in July 2018 after Butina's arrest. - **Who paid.** His Milwaukee County financial-disclosure form valued the trip at about **$40,000**. Butina's group The Right to Bear Arms covered about $6,000 (hotel, meals, in-country transport, "excursions"); the NRA paid the rest (FOX6, 2018). Wikipedia also lists NRA board member [[Pete Brownell]] among the funders. - **What happened.** Clarke posed for a group photo with Butina, toured the Russian arms maker Orsis, and — per Wikipedia's sourcing — met Foreign Minister [[Sergey Lavrov]] and attended an event where [[Alexander Torshin]] spoke. See [[Russia-NRA Connection]]. - Clarke was not charged with anything in connection with the trip. Butina pleaded guilty in December 2018 to acting as an unregistered Russian agent. ## Trump surrogate (2016–2019) - Spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland — see [[Trump 2016 Nomination]]. - **The DHS post that wasn't.** In May 2017 Clarke announced he would become an assistant secretary at the [[Department of Homeland Security]] for partnership and engagement; DHS said no appointment had been made, and on June 17, 2017 he withdrew. Then-Secretary [[John Kelly]] reportedly told him he would not get a DHS job, partly because of the jail deaths. - After resigning as sheriff he became a spokesman and senior adviser to the pro-Trump super PAC [[America First Action]], which paid his consulting firm almost $92,000 between September 2017 and July 2018. He left in 2019 for "We Build the Wall," the [[Steve Bannon]]–Brian Kolfage fundraising group later exposed as a fraud; Clarke was not charged. ## After 2020: election denial and the Proud Boys - At a Milwaukee-area pro-Trump rally about two months before January 6, 2021, he said, "We need a chapter of the [[Proud Boys]] right here in Wisconsin." He has called the group "non threatening" and "non violent" and called the prosecution of its leaders an abuse of power (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2023). See [[Stop the Steal]] and [[Election Denialism]]. - He has called the [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] "child's play," "a joke" and "a frat party gone wild" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2023). - In 2021 he set up a nonprofit, Rise Up Wisconsin; in 2023 he started a podcast and publicly floated a 2024 Senate challenge to Democrat [[Tammy Baldwin]], feuding with national Republicans who backed businessman [[Eric Hovde]], who became the nominee. Clarke did not run. ## Analytical note Clarke shows how county law enforcement became a national celebrity track on the right: an elected sheriff with a contested jail record converted his badge and hat into cable airtime, a convention slot, a near-appointment, PAC consulting fees and finally a role cheering on the street militias of 2020. The Moscow trip links that track to the [[NRA]]'s role as a gateway: the same delegation that carried a former NRA president also carried a sheriff the Trump campaign would soon put on stage. ## See Also - [[Russia-NRA Connection]] · [[Maria Butina]] · [[Alexander Torshin]] · [[David Keene]] · [[NRA]] - [[Proud Boys]] · [[Constitutional Sheriff]] · [[Stop the Steal]] · [[January 6 Capitol Attack]]