Story highlights "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," Clarke said.

"Maybe from a formatting standpoint the thesis isn't perfect, but the content is there," Clarke said.

(CNN) Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke said this week that a CNN KFile report on plagiarism in his master's thesis could impact the Trump administration's decision to hire him for a role at the Department of Homeland Security.

A CNN KFile review of Clarke's 2013 master's thesis found 47 examples in which Clarke used passages from sources and credited them with a footnote, without using quotation marks indicating that he took the language verbatim. In several instances, Clarke copied entire sentences while changing or replacing only one or two words.

Clarke has said that he had accepted an appointment as an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, but a DHS spokesperson said last week that no announcement of his appointment had been made.

In an interview with radio host Joe Pags that was recorded over the weekend and aired Monday, Clarke responded to the report by saying "time will tell" if he will still be welcome in the administration.

"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," Clarke said. "Will it be successful? It might, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over that."

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