Watch Sheriff David Clarke Rip Holder In Congressional Testimony

Milwaukee County’s Democratic sheriff, David Clarke, has a healthy history of criticizing the Obama administration, specifically Eric Holder and his rhetoric toward American law enforcement. In Clarke’s view, there’s a “frayed relationship” between police officers and Holder’s Department of Justice that he’s counting on Holder’s replacement, attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch, to mend.

Clarke characteristically commanded the attention of the room as he testified at Lynch’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday. He used the venue to call out Holder for his politically opportunistic behavior in the wake of Ferguson.

“The incendiary rhetoric used by Eric Holder created the pathway for a false narrative that then became the rallying cry for cop-haters across America,” Clarke said before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It sparked unjustified hatred towards America’s law enforcement agencies and its officers.”​

The Department of Justice showed near “hostility toward local law enforcement” and “treated police officers as adversaries instead of allies,” on Holder’s watch Clarke said.

Clarke categorically rejected the notion, pushed by Eric Holder and Obama surrogates, that police are racist. Clarke also said that if he is wrong in that assessment, that proof be provided by his critics.

If she is to be the next top cop in the nation, Lynch should show “a renewed commitment to rebuilding trust” with local police rather than “undermining the character and the integrity” of the forces as her predecessor had done, Clarke said.