Senator Accuses Jack Smith of Perjury, Discovers the Hawkeyes Are Not the Hawks

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2026 — There are few things more painful in politics than watching a trap close on the person who set it. On Tuesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt walked into a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with a laminated poster board, a stack of text messages, and absolute certainty that he was about to catch former special counsel Jack Smith in a lie. He walked out having taught the entire country the difference between a Hawk and a Hawkeye.

The plan, as Schmitt laid it out, was straightforward. He told Smith he had "a series of text messages" placing him at a "Hawks" game on Feb. 3, 2024. The implication was doing all the heavy lifting: the Atlanta Hawks were hosting the Golden State Warriors that night at State Farm Arena, and — the theory went — Smith had slipped down to Georgia to coordinate with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was prosecuting Donald Trump. The day before, Schmitt noted, Willis had "come clean" about her relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade. Connect the dots, and you have got yourself a conspiracy.

"Did you go to an NBA game against the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024?" Schmitt asked. Smith asked him to repeat the question. Schmitt said it was in Atlanta. Smith said he was not at the game and appeared confused.

Then Schmitt went for the kill. "So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024? Is that correct?" Smith denied it again. Schmitt, savoring the moment, gave him room to hang himself: "I'll give you a second to process it so you don't, you know, perjure yourself." Then, for the record: "I think you've already perjured yourself." He closed his questioning by calling Smith a "total dirtbag."

The trap door opens the wrong way

Here is the thing about perjury traps: they only work if your facts are right. Smith had indeed been at a basketball game on Feb. 3, 2024. It just was not the one on Schmitt's poster board.

With an assist from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the record got corrected in real time. Smith had been in College Park, Maryland, watching the University of Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball team play the Maryland Terrapins — because Caitlin Clark was on the court. The Atlanta Hawks play in Georgia. The Iowa Hawkeyes play in Iowa, and on that particular night, in Maryland. Hawkeyes are not Hawks. College Park is not Atlanta. A women's college basketball game is not an NBA game.

"Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully," Klobuchar told her colleague. It was the politest possible way to say: read the texts, man.

And about those texts — the ones Schmitt waved around as his smoking gun. Texts obtained by The Hill from the Department of Justice made no reference to any basketball team at all. No Hawks. No Hawkeyes. Just seating arrangements for Smith and his staff, including one noting "109 Row 1" had been reserved. Over a month after the game, one of the texts referenced Caitlin Clark — and Schmitt's own staff acknowledged the senator had no texts referencing Clark. The poster board, featuring cutouts of Smith, Willis, and Wade alongside the State Farm Arena, was briefly held up behind Schmitt, then quickly lowered before anyone could get a good look at it.

The face that launched a thousand memes

If you watched the hearing, you know the real star was not Schmitt or Smith. It was Sen. Katie Britt, seated nearby, whose stunned expression as the exchange unraveled was captured on camera and immediately went everywhere. Fox News' Oct. 2 roundup of the week's viral political moments led with it: "Lawmaker's stunned face and other viral moments cap rough week for political class." When your own party's senators are making that face, the hearing is not going the way you planned.

The piling-on was swift. The Wrap called it "completely humiliating." Social media did what social media does. And somewhere in Iowa City, Hawkeyes fans experienced the strange sensation of becoming a national punchline in a Senate hearing about prosecutorial misconduct.

"Not a mistake"

What elevates this from a simple gaffe to a certified Rewind is what happened after. Cornered by TMZ, Schmitt refused the off-ramp. "There's not a mistake," he said. His defense: he asked Smith if he was in Atlanta, and the only NBA game with a 7:30 tipoff that night was in Atlanta. (The Hawks did host the Warriors at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 3. Iowa tipped against Maryland at 8 p.m. Neither of those facts puts Jack Smith in Georgia.)

Then, asked about it by CNN, Schmitt reached for humor: "Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?" Which is, to be fair, a funny line. It is also an accidental admission that the whole theory collapsed the moment someone checked which basketball team was involved.

Schmitt, 51, is not some backbencher who wandered into the wrong hearing room. He is a former Missouri attorney general. He knows what perjury means. He looked a witness in the eye, on live television, under the formal setting of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and accused him of a federal crime — based on text messages that did not say what he said they said, about a game in a city the witness was not in, involving a team with a different name than the one Schmitt named.

Why this one matters

Let us be clear about something: this column punches up. Eric Schmitt is a United States senator with real power, real staff, and real resources. He had every tool available to verify a two-year-old basketball schedule before accusing a man of perjury on television. The failure here is not that he mixed up two bird mascots — though that is extremely funny. The failure is the process: the certainty without the checking, the poster board without the proof, the accusation without the evidence.

There is a lesson buried in the comedy, and it is not a partisan one. Anybody with a laminated poster board and a theory should probably read the texts first. Verify before you laminate. Check the mascot. And if your colleague has to explain the difference between the Hawks and the Hawkeyes to you on live TV, maybe — just maybe — the perjury trap was not the move.

The Rewind will be watching to see if the senator ever issues the correction. We are not holding our breath. In the meantime, somewhere in Maryland, there is a seat — 109, Row 1 — with quite a story to tell. Our newsroom has the week's other viral moments, and the culture desk is tracking everything else worth your time.