There appears to be no love lost between Attorney General Eric Holder and one of his most pointed critics, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke.
“What’s up with the hat?” Holder asked Clarke during a meeting of sheriffs and police chiefs at the Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. late last month, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
While most of the law enforcement officials in attendance at the two-day meeting were wearing business attire or police uniform hats, Clarke donned a white cowboy hat.
The four-term sheriff has said that he wears cowboy attire in honor of his uncle, a former football player for the Dallas Cowboys.
The timeline and full context of Holder’s comment is not known.
In various media appearances, Clarke has criticized Holder for what he perceives as his anti-cop policies and rhetoric. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month for Loretta Lynch, who was nominated to replace Holder, Clarke called Holder an enabler of “cop-haters.”
He has also called on Holder to apologize to the nation’s cops for his statements and actions in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown by a white Ferguson, Mo. police officer.
Clarke revisited those comments during the Q&A at the winter meeting.
After Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn spoke, Clarke manned the podium and again criticized Holder for his actions during the Ferguson aftermath.
Flynn reportedly responded to Clarke’s comments saying that Holder should be treated like a guest at the event.
“He was in full Fox News mode,” a source close to Flynn told the Journal-Sentinel.
Clarke also reportedly left the meeting before it was finished.