The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!
The Daily BS • Bo Snerdley Cuts Through It!

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Reporter corners Eric Schmitt over viral Hawks-Hawkeyes mix-up — he insists: ‘It’s not a mistake!’

by

BS BULLETIN:

  • Sen. Eric Schmitt confronted Jack Smith with texts he believed placed the former special counsel at an Atlanta Hawks game.
  • Smith was actually at an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game in Maryland to see Caitlin Clark.
  • Confronted by a reporter afterward, Schmitt repeatedly refused to call the episode a mistake.

Sen. Eric Schmitt had plenty of time to reconsider his viral Jack Smith basketball blunder Tuesday.

He didn’t.

TMZ DC reporter Charlie Cotton caught up with the Missouri Republican outside the Capitol after Schmitt’s dramatic attempt to confront Smith during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing unraveled in real time.

“I gotta ask, man, what happened in there?” Cotton asked.

“About what?” Schmitt replied.

The episode began when Schmitt questioned Smith about whether he had attended an NBA game between the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024.

Smith said no.

Schmitt then produced text messages he said showed Smith had been at a basketball game that night and suggested Smith could be committing perjury. The questioning was tied to Schmitt’s effort to determine whether Smith had coordinated with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who separately prosecuted President Donald Trump in Georgia.

There was one rather substantial problem.

Smith had attended a basketball game — just not that basketball game.

He was at the University of Maryland watching the Terrapins play the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s team, featuring Caitlin Clark.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar pointed out the apparent Hawks-Hawkeyes confusion during the hearing.

Cotton pressed Schmitt about it afterward. “How did that mistake happen?” he asked. “It’s not a mistake!” Schmitt responded.

Schmitt argued that he had simply asked Smith whether he was in Atlanta and said the only NBA game taking place at the relevant time was there.

The reporter wasn’t quite finished. Schmitt insisted the premise of his questioning was still legitimate because he had been trying to determine whether Smith had traveled to Atlanta. He noted that the Atlanta Hawks game was the only NBA game with the relevant tipoff time and said that was why he asked Smith whether he had been there.

Cotton wasn’t letting him off that easily.

The reporter asked whether anyone on Schmitt’s staff might face consequences for supplying the information that produced the mix-up.

Schmitt said no, arguing that he had simply asked Smith a question about whether he had been in Atlanta.

Cotton then asked whether Schmitt considered the episode embarrassing.

“No. I ask questions,” Schmitt replied.

The exchange got even more pointed when Cotton reminded him that Smith said he had been at the Hawkeyes game.

“That’s what he says,” Schmitt answered.

Cotton pushed back, noting that there was footage showing Smith in the audience that night.

“For that night? Great,” Schmitt responded.

“Well, then he was at the Hawkeyes game.”

Schmitt nevertheless returned to his original defense: his question, he said, had been whether Smith was in Atlanta.

Schmitt later appeared to lean into the episode on social media.

“Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?” he wrote.

MY QUICK TAKE

When you’re about to accuse somebody of perjury on national television, those little details have a funny way of becoming important.

DBS WIRE SOURCES

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