Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) appeared to mix up two basketball teams on Tuesday while questioning former special counsel Jack Smith, undermining his attempt to suggest Smith coordinated with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The exchange occurred during a Senate hearing where Smith faced GOP scrutiny over his Trump investigations.
Schmitt asked Smith whether he had traveled to Atlanta in 2024 to attend an Atlanta Hawks game, implying the trip was an opportunity to meet with Willis, who also brought charges against former President Donald Trump. Schmitt claimed he had text messages referencing the game, though a board displaying the messages was only briefly shown by his staff.
Smith responded that he did not recall going to Atlanta during that period and said he did not meet Willis. "I really don’t think so. It’s possible I flew through the Atlanta airport on the way to Florida, but I do not have a recollection of going to Atlanta. I definitely did not go to a Hawks game," Smith said.
Schmitt emphasized that the February 2024 game he referenced was the day after Willis revealed she was in a relationship with one of her staffers, sparking scrutiny around the Fulton County election interference case. "Let me just give you a little context. The day before Fannie Willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor, you know, the Atlanta prosecutor that was also trying to get Trump. The next day, were you in Atlanta?" Schmitt asked.
Smith then mentioned that he had attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland to watch Caitlin Clark play. The questioning ended with Schmitt calling Smith a "villain" and "dirtbag." Amid protests from Democrats, Schmitt initially refused to show the text messages again, prompting cries that Smith deserved to see what he was being asked to respond to; Schmitt later relented.
The text messages showed one prosecutor on Smith’s team having booked a meeting room only to be told by another staffer that Smith is "already down here." The messages did not reference any basketball team names or games, though Schmitt told Smith, "I don’t think you know that we have this stuff."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who was next in line for questioning, suggested Schmitt may have confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes. "Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes?…that might be the confusion over the names of the team," she said. Schmitt snapped that Klobuchar was trying to "rehabilitate the witness."
After wrapping her questioning, Klobuchar criticized Schmitt for calling the prosecutor a "dirtbag." She confirmed that the Iowa Hawkeyes played Maryland on February 3, 2024, winning 93-85, with Caitlin Clark scoring over 30 points. "And I would just say, 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," she said.
The hearing was part of broader GOP efforts to scrutinize Smith’s probes into Trump. Smith has defended his prosecutions, warning of a rule-of-law crisis, as Republicans continue to target his work.
