From my FB feed today --
Schmitt arrived at the Senate hearing certain he had cracked the case. He asked Smith whether he had attended the Golden State Warriors versus Atlanta Hawks game in Atlanta on February 3, 2024.
Smith looked genuinely puzzled. “What city would that be in?”
“Atlanta,” Schmitt replied.
“No,” Smith said.
Schmitt pushed harder. “So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, is that correct?”
Smith answered, “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that.”
Then came the big reveal. Schmitt invoked Fani Willis’s relationship with Nathan Wade, claimed he had text messages placing Smith at the game, and had a staffer lift a poster board beside him.
“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Schmitt said. “So I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.”
Smith barely had time to see the board before it disappeared. “You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again.”
Schmitt would not let him. “I think you’ve already perjured yourself.”
Then came the stunning reversal that will follow him for his entire career.
Smith then offered the tiny, devastating fact Schmitt had apparently never bothered to check. “I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing,” he said. “Maryland playing Iowa, I think February of 2024.”
Amy Klobuchar had the answer ready. Iowa played Maryland on February 3. Iowa won 93 to 85. Caitlin Clark scored 30 points.
“The University of Iowa,” Smith clarified.
Senator Katie Britt's face dropped in total shock... She sat there, stunned.
Klobuchar asked whether Iowa’s team might be called “the Hawkeyes.” She told Schmitt, “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.”
Schmitt had no answers. Instead, he yelled.
Schmitt began shouting about whose time it was. Klobuchar calmly answered that senators should have “their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag.”
“You had the teams wrong, sir.”
Senator Eric Schmitt staged a "gotcha" ambush against a man with an impeccable record.
But it backfired. Badly.
