Schmitt Asked About the Hawks and Got the Hawkeyes

Sen. Eric Schmitt asked Jack Smith about an Atlanta Hawks game. Smith said he had been at a game in Maryland, watching the Iowa Hawkeyes.

That small difference took over a Senate hearing.

Schmitt was questioning Smith about whether he attended an NBA game in Atlanta in February 2024. The game involved the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors. Schmitt appeared to use the question to place Smith in Atlanta at a time tied to questions about Georgia prosecutors and former President Donald Trump.

Smith said he did not attend the Hawks game. He also said he did not recall being in Atlanta at that time.

He did remember another basketball game. It was a University of Iowa women’s game against Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Iowa’s team is known as the Hawkeyes. Caitlin Clark, then a major college basketball star, played for Iowa.

The distinction should have been easy to clear up. Instead, it became the main event.

Rep. Jamie Raskin criticized Schmitt after the exchange. Raskin said Schmitt and his staff appeared to have confused one basketball team with another. The criticism came from a House member watching a Senate inquiry that was meant to examine serious claims about Smith’s work.

That is what makes the episode hard to brush aside. A hearing can contain a bad question. It can contain a witness who remembers events differently. But when lawmakers are trying to build a case, the basic details need to hold.

The issue was not sports knowledge. It was preparation.

Schmitt asked Smith about the Hawks and the Warriors. Smith answered that he had not attended that game. When Smith mentioned the Iowa game in Maryland, the gap in the question became clear. The teams were not the same. The cities were not the same. The games were not the same.

A staff mistake may have caused the confusion. That remains unclear. Schmitt has pushed back on the idea that he made a mistake, saying his information showed that Smith had been at a basketball game in Atlanta. The hearing itself did not settle how the mix-up began.

It did show what happens when a question is asked with confidence before its details are fully checked.

This matters because the question was not offered as a harmless sports reference. Schmitt used the alleged Atlanta trip to press Smith about whether he had met with people connected to a Georgia case involving Trump. He was trying to connect a place, a date, and a basketball game.

If the game was the wrong game, the larger line of questioning weakens with it.

That does not prove every point Smith made was correct. It does not settle where Smith was on every day in February 2024. It does not answer every question about his work as special counsel. Those are separate matters, and they deserve separate evidence.

The public record described in coverage of the hearing supports a narrower point. Schmitt asked about an NBA game in Atlanta. Smith denied attending it and recalled attending a college game in Maryland. Other lawmakers then raised the apparent confusion between the Hawks and the Hawkeyes.

Raskin went further. He said Schmitt had disgraced himself with the exchange and treated it as an effort to serve Donald Trump. That is Raskin’s judgment, not an established fact about Schmitt’s purpose. Still, the criticism landed because the confusion was visible during the questioning.

The Senate has wide room for hard questions. Members can challenge witnesses, test memories, and press claims that may affect public trust. They can also be wrong. What they cannot afford is to make a weak factual foundation look like a strong one.

Ordinary people know the difference between a mistake and a cover-up. They also know the difference between a serious question and a question that falls apart when the names are checked. Most do not expect lawmakers to know every team in every league. They do expect them to know what they are asking a witness.

The exchange also placed Smith in an unusual position. He was not simply denying a trip. He had to explain that he had attended a different basketball game, in a different place, involving a different team. The answer may have sounded confusing at first because the question had already mixed the details together.

That burden should not fall on the witness.

There is a temptation to treat moments like this as internet entertainment. The names are similar. The setting is formal. The mistake is easy to repeat. But the hearing was about conduct by a former special counsel, not a trivia contest.

A Senate inquiry earns respect through care. That means checking the date, the city, the event, and the person before asking the question. It means slowing down when a witness gives an answer that does not fit the theory. It means allowing a claim to fail without trying to force it back into place.

The Hawks were in Atlanta. The Hawkeyes were in Maryland. That is the record as described in the exchange.

The rest of the argument was built around those details. Once they came apart, the hearing had less to show than its tone suggested.

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