Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt’s spectacularly failed attempt to catch former special counsel Jack Smith in a lie just picked up another awkward twist.
One day after the Senate hearing that produced Schmitt’s now-viral Hawks-versus-Hawkeyes blunder, the Missouri Republican pulled out of a scheduled television appearance.
Politico reporter Dasha Burns revealed the change while previewing Friday’s edition of “Ceasefire,” the C-SPAN program she hosts.
“Senator Schmitt was supposed to appear on this program with Senator Chris Coons,” Burns explained, referring to the Democratic senator from Delaware.
Then came the update:
“But he pulled out a day after that hearing.”
Burns did not establish why Schmitt withdrew, so there is no basis to say the viral embarrassment caused the cancellation.
But the timing comes as new reporting is making the underlying story considerably more uncomfortable for the senator.
Schmitt’s problems began during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Smith.
The Republican senator confronted the former special counsel with what he presented as evidence that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game in Georgia on February 3, 2024.
The implication was serious.
Schmitt was attempting to establish whether Smith had been in Atlanta around the same time Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was separately prosecuting Donald Trump.
Smith denied attending the Hawks game.
“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” Smith told him.
Schmitt then raised the stakes dramatically.
“I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” he told Smith.
There was just one enormous problem.
Smith had attended a basketball game that night — but it wasn’t the Atlanta Hawks.
He was in College Park, Maryland, watching the University of Maryland play the Iowa Hawkeyes in women’s college basketball.
Caitlin Clark was playing for Iowa.
Later in the hearing, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar identified the apparent mix-up: Hawks versus Hawkeyes.
The attempted gotcha collapsed almost instantly.
But subsequent reporting has made the episode even more remarkable.
The Hill reviewed the underlying text messages that Schmitt’s team had relied upon.
According to the outlet, the messages did not actually identify either basketball team.
No Atlanta Hawks.
No Iowa Hawkeyes.
Instead, the messages largely involved mundane logistics about finding seats and meeting inside an arena.
The Hill reported that one message referenced “109 Row 1.”
Separate reporting found another glaring problem with the Atlanta theory: that seating designation did not correspond with the row configuration in Section 109 of the Hawks’ State Farm Arena.
And there was another warning sign before Schmitt ever confronted Smith publicly.
MS NOW reported that Republican Senate Judiciary Committee staff had warned Schmitt’s team that the text messages were “unvetted” and that his staff would need to independently verify the information.
Schmitt nevertheless went ahead with the questioning.
The senator has since insisted that he was simply doing his job by asking Smith questions.
When confronted by a reporter after the hearing and told that video showed Smith at the Iowa-Maryland game, Schmitt responded:
“Great. Well, then he was at the Hawkeyes game. I just asked him if he was in Atlanta.”
He also publicly joked afterward:
“Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?”
Schmitt has maintained that he is not embarrassed by the episode.
But the story hasn’t disappeared.
First came the viral hearing footage.
Then came reporting that the evidence had been flagged as unvetted.
Then came the revelation that the text messages themselves apparently never identified the Hawks at all.
And now comes Burns’ disclosure that Schmitt had been scheduled to appear on her program — only to pull out the day after the hearing.
Again, Burns did not say why Schmitt canceled, and the timing alone does not establish his reason.
But after a week in which Schmitt tried to put Jack Smith on the defensive, it is the senator’s own preparation and handling of the evidence that are now facing scrutiny.
And the Hawks-versus-Hawkeyes mix-up just keeps following him.
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