US senators Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and John Kennedy (R-LA) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former special counsel at the Justice Department Jack Smith, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., US, September 29, 2026.
When Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) mistakenly accused prosecutor Jack Smith of being at a basketball game in Atlanta (and implicitly colluding with another anti-Trump prosecutor, Fani Willis), observers initially accused him of wrongly trusting staffers who mixed up the Atlanta Hawks basketball team with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes franchise.
Yet even as some Republicans blasted Schmitt for his egregious error and others promoted him as a hero while pretending he had not been publicly fact-checked, few suspected the truth: Schmitt knew his claims about Smith were unvetted, but presented them as factual anyway.
"With correct knowledge of the conversation, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt was warned ahead of time by Republican staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Jack Smith text he wants to use to catch Smith in a line were 'unvetted,'" MS NOW anchor Michael Steele reported on Wednesday, breaking a story exclusive to the network. "Schmitt? Well, he decided to use it anyway."
It is notable that Schmitt initially refused to show the posterboard that displayed the supposedly embarrassing texts from Smith for more than a few moments, prompting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to call out his behavior as unprofessional and unusual. Steele's admission suggests it is possible Schmitt may have done this precisely because he knew the texts were unvetted.
According to the MS NOW report, "the text had been given to the committee by the Trump Justice Department, which meant he received access to those. It was their responsibility to verify the information."
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) appeared on MS NOW to discuss the revelations.
"You know what was so richly ironic about that interchange" was that they clearly were "determined to tarnish the reputation of Jack Smith. And what did he end up doing? Tarnishing his own reputation. This was abysmal. It was laughable."
Longtime conservative commentator Charlie Sykes offered a scathing yet accurate description of how Schmitt handled himself during the confrontation with Smith.
“Strutting and smug, Schmitt tried to make the case that Smith perjured himself when he said he had not gone to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game to meet with Fani Willis — the Fulton County DA who also prosecuted President Donald Trump… Schmitt unveiled what he thought was his smoking gun,” Sykes wrote, noting that Schmitt was smirking as he presented the posterboard while Kennedy held it up and defiantly glared at Smith.
“I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself,” Schmitt told Smith, ultimately describing Smith as a “dirtbag.”
Schmitt had refused to apologize or admit he was wrong by Wednesday evening.
