GOP Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana questioned former special counsel Jack Smith about his wife's political views. Smith told Kennedy he wasn't at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to talk about his family.
Page A4From§Eachthe matinee edition — 29 September 2026
THE LEDGER
Senate spends four hours on a basketball mix-up, minutes on the 4,782 bank accounts Smith subpoenaed.
As it ran on the front
Jack Smith went back to the Hill Tuesday and told the Senate Judiciary Committee flatly: I stand by the decisions to charge Trump. He added he won't be silenced by continued threats of prosecution. Four hours later, the transcript shows what the committee actually did with that testimony.
Sen. Eric Schmitt spent his turn trying to place Smith at an NBA game in Atlanta, tying him to the Fani Willis mess next door. Smith said the game he remembered was Iowa Hawkeyes, played in Maryland. Sen. Amy Klobuchar pointed out the senator had the wrong sport's teams mixed up. Sen. John Kennedy took his turn asking about Smith's conversations with Attorney General Merrick Garland, then told him, on the record, he makes him "want to throw up in my mouth." Kennedy also asked Smith what his wife thinks of Trump and the Obamas. Smith said he wasn't there to talk about his family.…
…(cont) That's the four hours.
Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley put a number on the table: Smith's Arctic Frost investigation obtained checks from at least 4,782 Americans who donated to Trump — bank accounts, routing numbers, the works. The Federalist rounds the same haul to "nearly 5,000" checks. The Daily Caller ran Smith's own answer as its headline: "Yes we acquired financial information." Under oath, on the record, Smith didn't deny any of it.
None of that financial haul made it to a courtroom. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed both of Smith's cases against Trump on Nov. 25, 2024 — the documents case and the election case — before either reached a jury. The checks stayed collected anyway.
So line it up. A Senate committee spent four hours on a basketball arena and a senator's stomach. It spent maybe four minutes on the fact that the federal government, under subpoena, holds bank account and routing numbers for close to 5,000 people whose only paper trail is a check written to a presidential campaign. The case that authorized the subpoena is dismissed. The information it pulled in is not returned, not destroyed, not mentioned again in any of the day's four hours — until Grassley made Smith say it out loud, for the record, under oath.
“They gave a senator four hours to lose a seating chart and gave the checkbook four minutes, and that's not an accident, that's the schedule working exactly as designed. Nobody in that room asked where 4,782 people's bank routing numbers go once the case that justified pulling them is dead. You don't need a conspiracy for that — you just need a committee that would rather talk about a stomach ache than a filing cabinet.”
“Look, a subpoena is a subpoena, this is standard investigative process, nothing here that every special counsel doesn't do — wait, did I just defend the guy we spent the whole hearing calling a dirtbag? That's not — let me restate: the real story is Smith's conduct, not paperwork retention, and if people are uncomfortable with routine financial discovery maybe they shouldn't donate to controversial campaigns. That's not what I meant to say either.”
Earlier in this story
- Jack Smith accuses Trump of serious crimes; Senate Judiciary spends the hearing on a basketball seating chart. By Sal · the noon edition, 29 September 2026
The receipts
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‘Yes we acquired financial information’
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Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) effort to place former special counsel Jack Smith in Atlanta amid the Fani Willis controversy hit a snag on Tuesday when Smith said the basketball game he remembered attending featured Caitlin Clark in Maryland, not a supposed NBA game in the Peach State. The exchange during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s…
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Former special counsel Jack Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend his two criminal probes into President Donald Trump.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says former special counsel Jack Smith obtained checks from at least 4,782 Americans as part of his “Arctic Frost” investigation, giving the Biden administration access to these individuals’ bank accounts and routing numbers. Grassley grilled Smith about the collection of these…
Jack Smith returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to defend his derailed efforts to prosecute President Donald Trump, telling lawmakers he would not “be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the president.
During a Senate hearing, GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt accused special counsel Jack Smith of attending an NBA game between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors in Atlanta in early February 2024. At the time, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis revealed she had an affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
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· U.S. federal judge Tanya Chutkan of the District Court for the District of Columbia dismisses the two criminal cases by Jack Smith against President-elect Donald Trump, including the classified docume from the morgue, 25 Nov 2024
· Jack Smith to testify before Senate Judiciary next week from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.