Senator Eric Schmitt spent Tuesday accusing Jack Smith of perjury over a basketball game Smith never attended, in a city he never visited, involving a seat that didn’t exist. By the afternoon, he’d managed to drag Harvard Law School and — predictably — ASSLaw into the mess.
For the uninitiated, Schmitt asked Smith whether he attended “an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024.” Smith said he’d definitely never been to a Hawks game. Schmitt then smugly declared that he had text messages placing Smith in Atlanta and had his staff (and Senator John Kennedy for some reason) hold up a poster for the Perry Mason moment:
I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.
Schmitt announced that he thought Smith had perjured himself by denying he went to an Atlanta Hawks game and called the former special prosecutor “a total dirtbag.”
Of course, we all now know that Smith attended an Iowa Hawkeyes game on that date, a revelation that literally every Republican involved seems utterly humiliated by except Eric Schmitt who still doesn’t seem to have connected the dots.
It seems as though Schmitt’s trying to spin his fuck up as though watching the most omnipresent women’s basketball player of that year makes Smith weak? Or something. At this point, it’s unclear if Schmitt knows what he’s trying to say at any given moment.
In any event, Schmitt is getting absolutely demolished in the comments and it’s hilarious.
Among the many images from the hearing that achieved instant classic status, one focused on Schmitt flanked by two young staffers who seem to be realizing in real time that they just got demolished on live TV. Well, Marisa Kabas identified the two men, and they’re both lawyers. One was Ethan Harper, Schmitt’s chief counsel, who was just in Cambridge last month chatting with the Federalist Society about judicial selection. The other was Andrew Ceonzo, counsel to Schmitt and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a product of the Antonin Scalia Law School, or ASSLaw, as it shall forever be known.
Everyone involved in this affair deserves a heaping helping of scorn — including the staff. That said, the vibes on social media started turning toward this being a “staff mistake,” which we need to nip in the bud. This wasn’t an obscure bit of oppo research buried in a 50-page memo and passed up the chain. Schmitt accused a celebrated lawyer of perjury based on three text messages. He had every opportunity to read these texts and every obligation to exercise the 15 seconds of judgment required to realize that they might not back up the conspiracy theory he wanted to peddle.
The texts never mentioned Atlanta. Schmitt and his team seemingly found texts, crafted the loony theory they wanted to lay out, and never bothered pushing any further. One of the keys to understanding the modern conservative movement is a post (shared approvingly by resident CNN conservative Scott Jennings) “The problem with left-leaning media is their intrinsically more strict with their propaganda to only using verifiable sources….” That’s the nut of it. Conservatives see facts as annoying afterbirth of propaganda instead of the basis of a non-psychotic view of the world. That’s the mindset that grabs a text, assumes it’s probably about Jack Smith secretly huddling with Fani Willis, and calls it good enough.
And the staff almost assuredly bought in, contributing to the error through either inaction or active encouragement. But this isn’t on the pup lawyers.
It’s useful to know who they are, if only to revisit this when Donald Trump attempts to put one or both on the appellate bench before this is all over. So all the credit in the world to Kabas for working that out. At the same time, I suspect some Republicans are helping push stories about the staff to give Schmitt convenient bodies to shove under the bus — assuming he ever figures out that he’s wrong. Let’s not give Schmitt that escape hatch. This is on him.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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