A Republican senator’s attempt to throw evidence at a long-running conspiracy theory against Jack Smith blew up in his face during a heated congressional hearing Tuesday.
Senator Eric Schmitt, who accused the former special counsel of perjury and labeled him a “total dirtbag,” invoked a conspiracy theory that Smith’s team conspired with state prosecutors in Georgia — and claimed that he had evidence that Smith was attending an NBA game in Atlanta at the time.
In the middle of Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee, Schmitt held up a poster board containing what he claimed were text messages from Smith’s staff stating that the special counsel was attending an Atlanta Hawks NBA game — and suggested that he colluded with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to prosecute the president and his allies.
Smith was attending a basketball game that day. But it was the Iowa Hawkeyes, not the Hawks. And it was in Maryland.
Schmitt, who was corrected by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, shouted out across the panel as the pair argued over his claims.
“Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” Klobuchar told him.
“Whose questioning is this, by the way?” Schmitt yelled out. “Are we just having an open session here? Well, I’m glad you’re trying to rehabilitate the witness.”
“I think that people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag,” Klobuchar said. “You have your teams wrong, sir.”
The former special counsel faced another round of attacks from Republican members of the committee who have characterized him as a leading figure in what Trump has called the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice against his allies.
“You make me want to throw up in my mouth,” Louisiana Senator John Kennedy told him.
“You make what President Nixon did at Watergate look like a Sunday picnic,” added Senator Mike Lee.
Smith has repeatedly testified that he never traveled to Atlanta while serving as special counsel overseeing indictments against Trump, who faced criminal charges over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and failure to stop a mob of his supporters from storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The president also faced 40 separate charges stemming from allegations that he withheld hundreds of documents at his Mar-a-Lago compound after leaving office, and then obstructed federal law enforcement efforts to retrieve them.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Smith filed motions to dismiss both cases altogether, a decision that appeared inevitable; the special counsel’s office determined he could not prosecute a sitting president. Smith then completed his reports on the investigations, submitted them to the Office of Attorney General and resigned.
Willis, meanwhile, failed to keep herself on the Georgia case following a lengthy court battle after she admitted to hiring a former romantic partner as a special prosecutor.
Schmitt, whose staff briefly held up a poster board of text messages that was not shown to other members, suggested Smith had traveled to Atlanta after Willis “came clean.”
He then suggested Smith was lying to the panel.
“You may think you’re a hero in this story. But let me tell you something, you’ve done so much damage,” he told Smith. “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”
The Hawks played the Golden State Warriors inside Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on February 3, 2024.
The Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team played the Maryland Tarrapins that same day — but in College Park, Maryland.
“I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing right around that time, and the Marshals Service was there with me, you could check,” Smith testified.
“For a U.S. senator to have false information and imply, based on a confusion about the name of a team, that you were in another city and somehow involved that day in what was happening in Georgia and then call you a 'dirtbag' is something that deserves an apology,” Klobuchar said.
A crusade from Trump’s Republican allies in Congress to prosecute Smith kicked off last year, when Senate Republicans falsely accused the former special counsel and FBI investigators of “tapping” their phones.
Instead, Smith’s team sought a “preliminary toll analysis” of phone records, which only include what numbers were called and when and for how long. They do not include the contents of messages or conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap.
Senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s top Democrat, called attacks against him “petty, personal and political.”
“They are nothing but a smokescreen but to distract from the president’s own, clear unlawful conduct,” Durbin said in his opening remarks.
Smith has defended the investigations, stating that prosecutors uncovered evidence that the president “engaged in serious crimes against our nation.”
“If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts I would do so regardless if that president was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith said in his opening statement Tuesday.
“I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president and others,” he said. “I myself have been threatened with jail by the president of the United States, but I remain confident in the rule of law.”
In his first TV interview earlier this year, Smith told MS NOW’s Nicole Wallace that “we are facing an attack on the rule of law that is different in kind and scope to anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
When it comes to what Trump will do in midterm elections, Smith said the states should be “proactive” and be prepared to litigate “where it’s appropriate and where it would make sense to, if you have a sense or reason to believe that something’s going to be done to interfere with people’s right to vote and participate in democracy,” he said.
