During a congressional hearing this week, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) claimed former special counsel Jack Smith once attended an NBA game in Georgia to tie him to Fulton County’s prosecution of President Donald Trump, but according to a report, the texts the senator cited did not reference any basketball team names. Schmitt accused Smith of…
Page A3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 2 October 2026
Senator accuses prosecutor of attending basketball game, gets sport wrong on tape, evidence names no sport at all
As it ran on the front
Senator Eric Schmitt had a theory, and on Tuesday he brought it to the Senate Judiciary Committee on live television: Jack Smith, the former special counsel who indicted Donald Trump, had attended a basketball game in Atlanta in early February 2024, an Atlanta Hawks game against Golden State, during the exact week Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disclosed her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. The implication was coordination. The senator called the former special counsel a "dirtbag" and said so under oath-adjacent lights, with cameras running, in front of the record he was about to need.
Smith answered on the spot. He had attended a game, he said — the University of Iowa Hawkeyes against Maryland. In Maryland. Not Atlanta, not the Hawks, not anywhere near Fulton County. Senator Amy Klobuchar noted, for the transcript, that the senator appeared to be confusing two teams that share half a name and nothing else. Senator Mazie Hirono weighed in too. The hearing moved on; the clip did not. By Thursday it was still moving, cable panels dissecting a senator's basketball geography instead of his case, strategists from both parties called in to explain what had just happened on "The Takeout."…
…(cont) Then, on Friday, the predicate went with it. The Washington Examiner, reviewing the texts Schmitt had cited as his basis for the Hawks claim, reported that the texts did not reference any basketball team at all — not the Hawks, not the Hawkeyes, no team. The senator had not misidentified a team. He had supplied one, out loud, on camera, to a record that didn't contain it, then built a perjury accusation on top of the team he'd supplied.
That is the part worth sitting with. Every correction came from his own side of the hearing room: his own citation, his own exhibit, his own account of what it supposedly proved. The accusation didn't survive contact with the evidence it cited; it didn't survive contact with itself.
The hearing was called to examine whether a prosecutor had coordinated a case against a president. What the record now shows, days later, is a senator who coordinated an accusation out of a text message, assigned it a team, assigned it a city, and watched the committee's own transcript take each assignment away from him in order, on the clock, while the cameras he'd invited kept rolling.
“You don't need a conspiracy to see the trick — the guy accuses a federal prosecutor of fixing a case against a president, and the only fixed thing in the room was his own story, which he had to keep rewriting live. He got the team wrong, then it turned out the "evidence" never had a team in it to get wrong, and three days of cable still treated it as a real inquiry into Jack Smith instead of into Eric Schmitt. That's the con: you don't have to win the hearing, you just have to own the news cycle before anyone checks the tape.”
“The senator was establishing a timeline, not making a claim about jersey colors. He said Jack Smith attended an NBA game, an Atlanta Hawks game, in Atlanta, during the exact week Fani Willis's relationship with Nathan Wade came out — that's coordination, that's the story, the team name is a footnote. Smith says it was a Hawkeyes game. In Maryland. Okay, so — different sport, different state, different everything, but the point stands that — wait, no, actually the texts behind the point don't name a team at all, which I did not say, did I? I'm told I did not say that. The senator was asking tough questions. That's the job.”
The receipts
Sen. Eric Schmitt mixed up college basketball teams in a high-profile moment where he tried to accuse former special counsel Jack Smith of perjury during a Senate hearing earlier this week. Republican strategist Matt Whitlock and Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee join "The Takeout" to discuss.
· Watch: Sen. Schmitt appears to confuse basketball teams while calling Jack Smith a "dirtbag" from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Eric Schmitt seems to confuse basketball teams in attempt to link Jack Smith, Fani Willis from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Republican senator appears to mix up basketball teams during heated attack – video from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· WATCH LIVE: Jack Smith testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee from the morgue, 29 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.