Senator behind viral Jack Smith gotcha blunder doubles down when confronted over error
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.
Already a member?
Log in
The senator behind a failed gotcha moment aimed at former Special Counsel Jack Smith dug in his heels when confronted over his mistake.
Senator Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, accused Smith of committing perjury during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday as he tried to suggest that the former counsel had been in Atlanta on February 3, 2024.
Schmitt said he had proof that Smith had been watching an NBA Atlanta Hawks game that night, while accusing him of colluding with state prosecutors in Georgia investigating President Trump.
It soon became clear Schmitt had seemingly confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes, with Senator Katie Britt’s stunned reaction quickly going viral.
One social media user even joked that her “soul left her body.”
Asked by a TMZ reporter about how he felt about the blunder, Schmitt declared that he was not mistaken.
“It’s not a mistake. I asked him if he was in Atlanta,” he told journalist Charlie Cotton. “The only NBA game going on – actually, the only NCAA men’s game or NBA game – with a 7.30 tip-off was in Atlanta, so I asked him if he was in Atlanta that night.
“I asked him if he was at a Hawks game in Atlanta, because we’re trying to figure out how much coordination took place between him and the Atlanta prosecutor.”
In footage released by MeidasTouch, Smith can be seen watching the Iowa Hawkeyes team on the night in question – far from Atlanta.
Speaking to Cotton, though, Schmitt initially doubled down on stating that he did not know where Smith was that night.
“He’s not answered truthfully before, so people can decide if that’s the truth or not,” he claimed. “I mean, I suppose that the Department of Justice can ask him where he was that night. I don’t know.”
“The Hawkeyes game,” Cotton replied bluntly, adding that footage showed that Smith was in the crowd that night.
“For that night?” Schmitt questioned. “Great. Well, then, he was at the Hawkeyes games. I just asked him if he was in Atlanta.”
Schmitt was shredded on social media for his apparent blunder, as was Britt for her stunned reaction to his argument falling apart.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who was at the hearing, later tore into Schmitt for describing Smith as a “dirtbag.”
“You are trying in your kind of MAGA conspiracy world to come up with this crazy thing that he was in a city that he wasn’t in, that he was at a game, and he had the wrong league and the wrong state and the wrong city, and then use that to completely try to discredit him, which of course didn’t work in a minute,” she blasted on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
Smith brought two now-dismissed cases against Trump amid investigations into the president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office at the end of his first term.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith claimed at the hearing.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
