Eric Schmitt Tried to Make a Basketball Game a Perjury Case

Eric Schmitt told Jack Smith not to perjure himself over a basketball game, then appeared to have the wrong basketball team.

That is a small fact with a large weight. Smith, the former special counsel, was before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer for his investigations of President Donald Trump. Schmitt, the Missouri senator, tried to place him at an Atlanta Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024.

The point was not sports. Schmitt was trying to suggest Smith had been in Atlanta and may have met with Fani Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor who led the criminal case against Trump over efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result.

Smith denied going to a Hawks game. He also said he had not met Willis or Nathan Wade during his time as special counsel.

Then the claim came apart.

Smith recalled attending a different game that day: a women’s college game in Maryland between the Maryland Terrapins and the Iowa Hawkeyes. The hearing record and later reporting made clear that the game was not in Atlanta. The Hawks and Hawkeyes are not close calls. One is an NBA team in Georgia. The other is a college team whose game was played in Maryland.

Schmitt had accused Smith of lying under oath. He told him he had already perjured himself. Those are grave words in any setting. In a Senate hearing, aimed at a former prosecutor and tied to cases involving a president, they should rest on facts that have been checked twice.

A claim with consequences

It is fair for senators to question prosecutors. It is fair to ask whether powerful offices were used well. Smith’s work has drawn sharp disagreement, and public officials do not get a pass because their job is hard or their target is politically divisive.

But there is a line between hard questioning and setting a trap with a faulty premise.

I do not think every mistake in a hearing proves bad faith. People get dates wrong. Staff research can fail. A member of Congress can overstate what a document shows. Those errors should be corrected plainly, then examined.

This episode is harder to shrug off because the mistake was used to raise the stakes. Schmitt did not merely ask Smith where he was. He pressed him to reconsider his answer so he would not commit perjury. He presented the matter as proof of a hidden link between Smith and Willis.

For an ordinary person watching at home, the terms can blur fast. A senator says “perjury.” A former prosecutor is accused. A case involving the president is invoked. It can sound settled before the evidence has been tested.

That is the part that should give us pause.

A hearing is not supposed to work like a social media clip, where speed and certainty win. It is supposed to help the public see how a claim holds up under questions. When a claim fails, the correction should be as clear as the charge was.

The standard still matters

Schmitt later defended his questions and said the matter was for a prosecutor to determine. That answer leaves an important gap. The immediate issue was never only whether a prosecutor might bring a case. It was whether the senator had enough to accuse a witness of a crime in public.

The answer appears to be no.

Smith’s testimony did not establish that he was in Atlanta or that he met Willis. The known facts instead point to a college basketball game in Maryland. The larger theory Schmitt was trying to build therefore lost its key support in real time.

The Atlanta investigation itself remains a serious matter. Willis brought a state case against Trump and others, and the case has faced legal fights of its own. Smith’s federal cases against Trump were also highly contested. None of that makes loose claims acceptable. If anything, it raises the need for care.

People have good reason to expect elected officials to press hard when they suspect wrongdoing. They also have good reason to expect those officials to separate suspicion from proof.

The Senate has many tools. It can demand records, call witnesses, hold hearings, and expose real misconduct. Those powers are strongest when used with discipline. They weaken when a charge as serious as perjury is built on a mix-up that should have been caught before the hearing began.

There is still room for scrutiny of Smith, Willis, and the investigations that involved Trump. There should be room. But the work has to begin with the plain fact in front of us: a man was warned not to lie about attending an Atlanta Hawks game that he did not attend.

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