Republicans are often very good at converting an event into a scandal, even when there is none to be found. They keenly understand the basic mechanics of a contemporary political media that rewards conflict. The modern conservative machine often operates in unison to manufacture a reality-TV confrontation designed to thrill the GOP base. 

First, a Republican makes a dramatic accusation. Then, conservative influencers and right-wing media outlets duly amplify the charge until it becomes a viral “gotcha” moment. GOP politicians and operatives then go on podcasts and Fox News to repeat the accusation. By the time anyone checks the underlying evidence, the original allegation has become canon to conservatives. 

That was plainly the ambition behind Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt’s performance on Tuesday at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former special counsel Jack Smith. It was even there in the hearing’s title: “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters.” Convened by 93-year-old committee chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, it aimed to recast Smith, the prosecutor who indicted Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents, as the villain of a weaponized Justice Department. Smith, for his part, stood behind his case, stating emphatically, “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation.”

But with the midterm elections barely a month away, Republican senators made the calculated decision to relitigate Jan. 6 by fishing through Smith’s records in a desperate bid to find something — anything — to excite their base. What they found was confusion about a basketball game.

Before Tuesday’s hearing started, Schmitt looked like a man whose plan was coming together. Earlier that morning, Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei published a flattering bulletin placing Schmitt atop the speculative short list to be Vice President JD Vance’s 2028 running mate, quoting admirers of the senator. “We hear the VP views Schmitt as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator,” VandeHei wrote. The rollout appeared designed to elevate Schmitt’s national profile just as a splashy televised grilling of MAGA’s public enemy No. 1 was set to unfold. What happened instead was one of the most embarrassing misfires of any recent Senate hearing.

Near the end of his questioning, Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024. Smith looked genuinely confused and asked what city that would be in. Atlanta, Schmitt said. No, Smith replied. Schmitt then supplied the innuendo, noting that the day before, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had acknowledged her intimate relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who was helping lead her Georgia racketeering case against Trump. The unstated suggestion was that Smith had slipped into Georgia under the cover of a basketball game to coordinate with Willis. 

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Schmitt said he had a series of text messages from Smith’s team placing the prosecutor at the game, then he gave the former special counsel a beat to think it over: “I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.” A staffer hoisted a poster board showing purported texts alongside images of Smith, Willis and Wade and a photo of State Farm Arena, then yanked it back down with remarkable speed. Schmitt declared Smith had probably already perjured himself and blasted him as a “total dirtbag.”

The texts did not mention Atlanta at all. They mentioned a Hawks game. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., circled back later in the hearing and methodically dismantled the exchange. The whole thing collapsed because Schmitt, or someone working for him, apparently never considered the possibility that Smith might have attended a women’s basketball game, and only found one corresponding men’s game for the date in question. The game Smith attended was, in fact, a women’s college basketball game in College Park, Maryland between the Maryland Terrapins and the Iowa Hawkeyes, the team then led by Caitlin Clark. Schmitt’s entire conspiracy theory was built on basic factual incompetence. 

It’s tempting to treat this episode as merely humorous. There is something inherently ridiculous about a United States senator arriving at a televised hearing convinced he has caught a former special counsel in perjury, only to learn that the central clue in his conspiracy theory was just a shared bird mascot. The speed with which the poster was yanked down by Schmitt’s staffers told the entire story before the cameras. Realizing in real-time that they had walked straight into a trap, the senator’s team tried to bury the evidence and move on before anyone noticed. 

But an apparently pre-planned chorus of right-wing influencers had their talking points ready to deploy the second Schmitt’s gotcha dropped. Fox News’ Sean Hannity initially applauded Schmitt before deleting his post on X. Benny Johnson declared that Schmitt had caught Smith perjuring himself. Other conservative commentators circulated the clip as proof that Smith had been caught in a lie — and then quietly abandoned the claim. 

Instead of owning the blunder, Schmitt doubled down. Appearing afterward on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” where the hosts, Andrew Kolvet and Blake Neff, prompted him with the fiction intact, the senator continued to insist that he had been justified in asking the question. When confronted later by TMZ with the fact that Smith had actually been at the Iowa-Maryland game, Schmitt responded: “My job is to ask the question.” 

It was an extraordinary accusation to make on the strength of material that was, according to a report by MS NOW, explicitly described by Republican Judiciary Committee staff as “unvetted.” The political editor of KSDK-TV in St. Louis, Schmitt’s home market, mocked him openly for the mistake. 

Even within the senator’s own party, the embarrassment was palpable. A video of Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., looking on with a mask of utter horror quickly circulated online. “There’s something to be said about the staff work, and verifying before we do something like that publicly,” Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst told Raw Story. One unnamed Republican senator suggested the bad intel came directly from the White House. Reports soon surfaced that Schmitt’s general counsel Ethan Harper, who stood behind him holding the infamous poster, saw his potential White House staff position being placed into immediate jeopardy.

But since many conservatives will never let a thing like the truth get in the way of self-promotion, Schmitt took his victory lap after standing on a rake.

There is a familiar pattern in the refusal to feel shame. When Vance was caught spreading the false claim about immigrants eating pets in Ohio, he argued he would create and repeat fiction in service of a larger truth. Schmitt’s defenders are doing the same, treating a false perjury accusation as acceptable because it aimed at exposing supposed corruption. 

Step back, and the strategic picture is bleak for the people who planned this misfire. Senate Republicans chose to relitigate Jan. 6, embarrass themselves on national television and then double down rather than move on. It was propaganda and lawfare generation. The incompetence of the execution does not change the intent.

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It was a bit tense watching Jack Smith get grilled before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. During his testimony, the former special counsel defended himself against accusations of partisanship in his failed effort to prosecute President Donald Trump two years ago. The chaos of the current era has made the 2024 presidential campaign feel like it was a decade ago, but it’s important to recall that Smith secured indictments on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the other on his alleged mishandling of government records, including the classified documents he had stored at Mar-a-Lago. Both cases fell apart as Trump was elected to a second term.

Now Republicans, including Trump, are pushing for Smith himself to be prosecuted. This wasn’t the first time he has been dragged before Congress so lawmakers could get the soundbites needed for Fox News hits. But to his credit, Smith doubled down and said he would prosecute the president all over again.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith said during the hearing, adding, “If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans took the opportunity to lob insults and accusations at Smith for hours. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz accused him of bringing “the Department of Justice into disrepute,” while Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy was more graphic, telling Smith “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri claimed Smith “will go down as a total dirtbag” and also attempted to corner the former special prosecutor into possible perjury, accusing him of attending an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 as a pretext for meeting with Fani Willis, the local district attorney who prosecuted Trump in Georgia. But Schmitt — or some staffers who will soon be looking for employment — apparently confused the Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes — which are different teams, as it turns out. Smith had watched the Hawkeyes play in Maryland. (As a non-sports person, I confess I might have made the same mistake, except I check my facts.) Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., did Schmitt the favor of pointing out his error, quipping “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.” 

This only seemed to further anger Schmitt, who is reportedly angling to be Vice President JD Vance’s running mate in 2028.

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The whole bit, including a poster board of Smith’s blown-up text messages, was amazingly lazy, even for this Congress. It seemed as if some aide suffering from conspiracy-brain didn’t bother to check the details, or maybe they asked ChatGPT for help. Still, getting the facts wrong probably won’t hurt Schmitt. He got in the abusive remarks that will earn him MAGA’s seal of approval.

Not surprisingly, Democrats also defended Smith. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith nonstop are petty, personal and political,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said. Cory Booker of New Jersey claimed “This is gaslighting of the American people,” telling Smith, “I am so sorry that they’re attempting to put investigators on trial while ignoring the extraordinary conduct that that they are duty bound to really investigate.”

Maybe this all seems like theatrics, more fodder for the cable news spectacle. But the stakes for Smith are real, and this charade could also carry severe consequences for Americans. Since the moment he returned to office, Trump has worked overtime to take down his enemies. That hasn’t been too successful yet — emphasis on yet — but this is about much more than potentially putting Smith behind bars. By playing the victim, the president benefits from controlling the narrative, and perhaps rewriting history, which becomes even more critical as we approach the midterms and he continues promoting the lie he won the 2020 election. So Smith continuing to give the president and his MAGA trolls the proverbial finger isn’t just satisfying — it’s necessary. 

I’m not a Smith fanboy, though I certainly admire him for serving as a specialist prosecutor investigating war crimes in the Kosovo War. It feels misguided to turn public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., into heroes or thirst traps just for doing their jobs. Still, it’s worth noticing when someone in the hot seat does more than pay lip service to the idea of a just and accountable society, knowing that the consequences extend much further than their own personal freedom.

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