Eric Schmitt was warned that evidence he intended to introduce in his perjury trap for Jack Smith had not been vetted; Schmitt used it anyway, and now he might pay a political price

Eric Schmitt's perjury gaffe draws press attention (ABC4 News)

The blowback keeps piling up for U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) after his attempt to set a perjury trap for former Special Counsel Jack Smith blew up spectacularly at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The latest self-induced headache for Schmitt comes from a report that evidence he cited had not been vetted, and the senator knew that in advance. The latest comes from a jointly published piece at Daily Beast and Yahoo! News under the headline "MAGA senator hit with fresh humiliation after new bombshell." The report hinted that a Schmitt staffer might face fallout from the fiasco. William Vaillancourt writes:

The Republican senator who flubbed a gotcha moment while questioning former Special Counsel Jack Smith knew the evidence he cited had not been vetted, a new report claims.

Eric Schmitt was warned in advance that the series of text messages he proudly displayed at Tuesday's hearing were not properly vetted, a source familiar with the matter tells MS NOW.

As former attorney general of Missouri, Schmitt should know how to build a case, especially one he hoped would result in a perjury charge against Smith. So why did Schmitt haul off at the hearing with the legal equivalent of toilet paper stuck to his shoe? I can only think of 2-3 answers to that question. One is that Schmitt simply might not be too smart. Two is that Schmitt has become such an ardent Trumper that it clouded his judgment and caused him to become reckless. Three is that Schmitt desperately wants to gain a position in the Trump administration and was willing to do most anything to impress his would-be boss. Considering that Trump's poll numbers are flat lining, and the economy is cratering, it's hard to see why anyone would want to join the Trump White House. Has the Senate become that bad a gig?

Law students usually take a trial advocacy course in their second or third year of law school, and I suspect the primary lesson goes something like this: "Success in the courtroom depends on sound and thorough preparation." Eric Schmitt must have skipped class that day. Villaincourt writes:

Schmitt tried to corner Smith by asking whether he attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game, a roundabout way of suggesting he was colluding with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was investigating President Donald Trump's election interference in Georgia.

Smith, Schmitt claimed, committed perjury when he said he did not go to a Hawks game in February 2024. Smith answered that he had actually been at an Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball game instead—creating a viral moment that continues to embarrass Schmitt.

The Daily Beast/Yahoo! report provides background on how Schmitt came to wander into a proverbial cowpile:

The mishap originated when the Justice Department shared the texts with GOP staff on the Judiciary Committee, according to MS NOW. Chairman Chuck Grassley's staff omitted the texts from a memo about information to be used in the hearing. Grassley did not share the messages with his Democratic colleagues, either.

Schmitt's staff, the report claims, searched for information that might show a connection between Willis' investigation and Smith's. They were then given the texts, but with a warning that they had not been vetted. Schmitt's staff was reportedly told they would need to complete the necessary vetting.

They apparently did not.

A fact-check would have revealed that the seat number mentioned in the texts sent between Smith's staff does not exist in the Hawks' home arena. Smith also appears in the crowd in videos of the Hawkeyes game in Maryland, about 550. 

Before his error, Schmitt was floated as a potential running mate for JD Vance in 2028, and was described as "trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator." After the error, Schmitt seems to be none of those things.

As for the aforementioned Schmitt staffer, he also seems to have cow poopy on his shoe. Villaincourt writes:

The MAGA senator's disastrous line of questioning may also reap consequences for a member of his staff.

Prior to Tuesday, the staffer on Schmitt's team who held up the giant poster of the texts, Ethan Harper, was on track to leave his role as general counsel and join the White House in the Staff Secretary's office. However, the episode has added some doubt to that transition, Politico reports. The extent of Harper's behind-the-scenes involvement wasn't immediately clear.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Schmitt's office and the Justice Department for comment. 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Eric Schmitt's hometown newspaper, has such 'respect' for him that it seemed to take special delight in carving him a new anal cavity for concocting a perjury trap that went awry

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My news feed, as I write this, is filled with so many splendid beatdowns of U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) that it's impossible to pick a favorite. Schmitt, the junior senator from the Show-Me State, is the lawmaker who intended to set a perjury trap for former special counsel Jack Smith at Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and wound up becoming the punchline for a seemingly endless stream of online jokes. 

As of today, I'm embarrassed to say that I grew up in Missouri, a state not only represented by Eric Schmitt in the U.S. Senate but also by the execrable Josh Hawley (who has made so many wacky statements that Mother Jones' David Corn devoted an entire article to them.) In my lifetime, Missouri has produced an abundance of admirable politicians, from both parties. They include Democrats Thomas Eagleton, Warren Hearnes, Claire McCaskill, Richard Gephardt, Stuart Symington, and Mel Carnahan. They also should include Jerry Litton, who after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives was running for the U.S. Senate when he and his family died in a plane crash in 1976 on the night of his victory in the Democratic primary. I was 19 years old at the time, and I remember having an empty feeling upon hearing of Litton's death the next morning. In an effort to make money for college, I worked that summer in a nearby rubber factory that made V-belts for vehicles, appliances, record players and the like. I saw a lot of military belts come down the line, so I assumed they must have been used in tanks, armored vehicles, maybe weapons. All of this comes to mind because I have a vague memory of Jerry Litton visiting our plant that summer. I don't think I saw him, but I do seem to recall co-workers talking about his visit. I would go on to cast my first presidential ballot, for Jimmy Carter, that November, and I remember political pundits viewing Jerry Litton as a possible president someday. That made me wonder how Litton's political career might have turned out -- and if I might have wound up voting for him. 

On the GOP side, probably the three best-known names at that time were John Danforth, Christopher "Kit" Bond, and Gene Taylor. Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley have combined to convince me that the days of honorable Republicans from Missouri are over -- maybe forever.

Schmitt is so "revered" in Missouri that his hometown newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, seemed to take special delight in ripping him a new one for his ham-handed antics in the Jack Smith hearing. I enjoyed the P-D's editorial so much that I'm going to highlight some of my favorite lines in yellow. I hope you will get a highlighter of your favorite color and follow along with me. If you have come to loath Eric Schmitt, you will love the piece from the Post-Dispatch's editorial board. It will make you think, it will make you laugh, and it might even make you let out a hearty "Amen, Brother!" along the way. Let's give it a look, under the headline "Editorial: Schmitt airballs with 'dirtbag' attack":

Just when you think Eric Schmitt couldn’t possibly embarrass himself and his constituents any more than he already has, he goes in for a rhetorical layup, gratuitously throws an elbow, spectacularly misses the shot and then stomps around the court indignantly when the ref calls foul.

That’s all metaphorical, of course. What Missouri’s perpetually seething junior senator really, truly did on Tuesday (in front of the whole country!) was to proffer a loony right-wing conspiracy based on some misunderstood text messages; falsely accuse a prosecutor of perjury; call him a "villain" and a “total dirtbag” — and then stand by that playground-level pejorative even after the whole thing turned out to be a lazy mistake on the part of Schmitt and his staff regarding, of all things, a basketball game.

This is the man representing 6 million Missourians in the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” Sheesh.

What felt like an especially cringey episode of the HBO political comedy “Veep” began when Schmitt went after former special counsel Jack Smith during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In the upside-down moral universe that Schmitt and his fellow MAGA apostles occupy, the worst offense against constitutional democracy in our lifetimes wasn’t President Donald Trump’s damnable attempt to overturn the 2020 election; it was Smith’s admirable attempt to hold him accountable for it with criminal charges.

That and other legitimate criminal cases against Trump evaporated when he was reelected president in 2024. Trump’s congressional lickspittles (none more lickspittle-y than Schmitt) have been trying ever since to prosecute the prosecutor.

It was in pursuit of that twisted goal that Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended a February 2024 NBA game in Atlanta between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors. Smith — whose face conveyed that he was confused about the relevance of the question — said he was certain he hadn’t attended that game.

That’s when Schmitt sprung what he clearly imagined was his brilliant trap. A staffer briefly held up a poster board showing some text messages that, Schmitt declared, proved “you were in Atlanta, at a Warriors-Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024.”

Why is that relevant? Because that was the day after Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis publicly admitted an affair with her special prosecutor, thus endangering her own criminal proceedings against Trump. In Schmitt’s telling, this supposed evidence of Smith being in Atlanta proved the two anti-Trump prosecutors were improperly colluding on damage control from Willis’ admitted affair for the sake of their joint obsession with nailing Trump.

"I don't think you know we have this stuff,” said Schmitt, referring to the text messages in a tone that can only be described as glowering, “so I'll give you a second to process it so you don't perjure yourself.”

He subsequently added, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and declared Smith “a villain” and “a total dirtbag.”

Got all that? 

Good. So here’s the thing: None of it happened.

Smith did remember being at, not an NBA game in Atlanta, but a college women's basketball game in Maryland around that time — Maryland Terrapins vs. Iowa Hawkeyes. It was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who finally put it all together. Schmitt and his staff’s “ah-ha!” moment came down to them discovering Smith had been at a basketball game that night but misconstruing which game it was.

Wrong teams, wrong league, wrong state. It was based entirely on that sloppy staffing that Schmitt furiously accused Smith of perjury. 

You can tell a lot about a person based on how he reacts to making an embarrassing gaffe that, in this case, literally involved public, false criminal allegations. Is he apologetic? Regretful? Gracious? Even a little classy? Or does he lash out, his voice rising in anger, at the person he wronged?

As Klobuchar chided Schmitt for his recklessness and his “dirtbag” comment, Missouri’s junior senator growled: “I stand by that statement.”

And we’ll just leave it to readers to decide whose behavior in this story qualifies for the label “dirtbag” — let alone "villain."