Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt’s humiliating basketball mistake just got more embarrassing.
The MAGA senator questioned former special counsel Jack Smith during a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, during which he displayed text messages intended to surprise Smith. They revolved around claims that Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in Georgia on February 3, 2024.
Schmitt was trying to suggest that Smith colluded with Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis, who was at the time investigating President Donald Trump’s interference in the Georgia election. Excerpts of the text messages were even displayed on large posters during the hearing.
The Republican claimed Smith committed perjury by claiming he was not present at a Hawks game in Georgia that day. But Smith was in Maryland to attend an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game, where star player Caitlin Clark was playing. A video posted online shows Smith in the audience, about 550 miles from Atlanta.
However, text messages obtained by The Hill show that the messages Schmitt relied on for his trick questions did not mention the Hawks, Hawkeyes, Atlanta or even a specific team.
Instead, Schmitt’s team appears to have focused on the date: February. December 3, 2024 – to determine which game Smith could have attended. But rather than considering all of the basketball games played that night, the team researched the NBA and men’s college basketball schedules — and apparently never considered women’s college basketball. That left the University of Maryland-Iowa game, where Smith actually was, out of the search.
Schmitt previously told Politico that the timing of the messages matched the Hawks’ alert, noting that “the only 7:30 a.m. game in the NBA was in Atlanta.”
Messages sent on game day appear to document Smith’s team trying to find their seats and sharing seat numbers to figure out how to potentially connect after realizing they were seated in different areas.
“We’re in 201. Up, but on center court. I’ll go halfway down to say hello,” JP Cooney, Smith’s then-assistant, wrote in a text message in response to a question about whether a seat in row 109 was reserved for Smith, which was one of the exchanges printed on a poster.
The release of the text messages follows a source telling MS NOW on Wednesday that Schmitt had been warned that his team had not properly reviewed the communications.
A simple Google search would have revealed that the seating assignments cited in Smith’s staff texts do not exist at State Farm Arena, the Hawks’ home stadium.
The texts reviewed by The Hill were sent by Smith’s staff between July 2023 and May 2024. Although no basketball team was mentioned by name, in late March 2024, a few weeks after the Hawkeyes game Smith attended, prosecutor David Harbach wrote “Ps Caitlin Clark tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN.”
Schmitt’s staff says the senator did not receive the texts referencing Clark by name.
“Senator Schmitt never saw any texts referencing Caitlin Clark, which is why he asked what game Jack Smith was in. If Schmitt had received those text messages, of course, he would not have asked what game he was in. As the senator has since said, he has learned that the only thing he and Jack Smith have in common is that they are college sports fans,” a spokesperson for the senator told the Hill.
The Daily Beast has contacted Schmitt’s representatives for further comment.
The latest revelations follow news that Ethan Harper, Schmitt’s general counsel, lost a promotion over the humiliating episode.
Harper, who held up posters displaying the text messages to the Senate Judiciary Committee, was expected to leave her post at Schmitt on Friday for a new position in the White House staff secretary’s office next week, sources told Politico’s West Wing Playbook.
While there is no evidence that Harper is responsible for his boss’s mistake, three people familiar with the proposed decision told Politico that the White House’s position is now in doubt.
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