Schmitt Blunders on Jack Smith ‘Gotcha,’ Mistakes Atlanta Hawks for Iowa Hawkeyes

A confrontation between Senator Eric Schmitt and Special Counsel Jack Smith devolved into acrimony and absurdity on Tuesday when the Republican lawmaker accused the former prosecutor of attending an Atlanta Hawks game — when in actuality Mr. Smith was watching Caitlin Clark, now a superstar in the WNBA — as a member of the Iowa Hawkeyes.Mr. Smith was in Congress to testify under oath about “Operation Arctic Frost,” his criminal probe into the aftermath of the 2020 election that led to the handing up of charges against President Trump for election interference. That investigation involved accumulating telephone metadata of 14 Republican lawmakers and text messages from 44 solons, including some Democrats.“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” declared Mr. Smith at the start of his testimony. “Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.” The special counsel struck a similar note when he last testified before Congress in January.A memorable encounter transpired between Mr. Schmitt — a Missourian who is drawing buzz as a candidate for higher office — and Mr. Smith. The lawmaker claimed that the special counsel “perjured himself” by denying that he met with the District Attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, and her special prosecutor Nathan Wade, at Atlanta. Ms. Willis was disqualified from her prosecution of Mr. Trump for her secret romance with Mr. Wade.Mr. Schmitt asked Mr. Smith, “Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024?” Mr. Smith asked, “What city would that be in?” and Mr. Schmitt replied, “Atlanta.” Mr. Smith replied, “No.” The day before, on February 2, Ms. Willis filed a brief with a Fulton County court acknowledging her affair with Mr. Wade but denying that it required her to step aside from the case against Mr. Trump.Mr. Smith reiterated that he “definitely did not go to a Hawks game” and responded with an emphatic “no” when he was asked if he ever met Ms. Willis or Mr. Wade during his time as special counsel. At that point a member of Mr. Schmitt’s staff briefly showed and then withdrew an oversized printout of what appeared to be text messages from Mr. Smith’s staff that Mr. Schmitt alleged proved that Mr. Smith was at the Hawks game on February 3.“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Mr. Schmitt intoned to which Mr. Smith responded, “You just took it down real quick.” Mr. Schmitt refused to display the alleged text messages again. Senator Amy Klobuchar insisted that the posterboard be resurfaced, to which Mr. Smith responded that he attended a University of Maryland basketball game “where Caitlin Clark was playing.” Ms. Clark played for the University of Iowa, whose team name is the Hawkeyes. Ms. Klobuchar explained that Mr. Schmitt “had the teams wrong” and should have doublechecked the facts before calling Mr. Smith a “dirtbag,” as he did earlier. Mr. Schmitt said he stood by that statement. Ms. Klobuchar responded, “For a U.S. senator to have false information and imply, based on a confusion about the name of a team — which I knew, knowing my Midwestern sports — and imply that you were in another city, that you were somehow involved that day in what was happening in Georgia, and then call you a dirtbag, is something that deserves an apology.”While Mr. Smith does not appear to have met with Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, the latter of whom billed Fulton County for meetings with White House officials in 2022. He billed $2,000 for eight hours of work described as a “Conf with White House Counsel,” Mr. Wade also billed for “Interview with DC/White House.”Over the course of the hearing, which stretched for hours, Mr. Smith offered the steadfast defense of his tenure as special counsel. He declared that “Anybody who has worked with me or knows me during the course of my career knows that I would not let politics play a role. And I would just add that if you knew the people I worked with, they would not either.” Senator Charles Grassley, though, responded that the “Smith election case ultimately wasn’t just about Trump. It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.” Mr. Smith faces a criminal referral to the Department of Justice from Congressman Jim Jordan for allegedly lying under oath in a deposition he delivered in Decembr.

Schmitt Blunders on Jack Smith ‘Gotcha,’ Mistakes Atlanta Hawks for Iowa Hawkeyes

Schmitt Blunders on Jack Smith ‘Gotcha,’ Mistakes Atlanta Hawks for Iowa Hawkeyes

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