First, the Iowa Hawkeyes delivered a demoralizing 20-19 gut punch to the Michigan Wolverines on a last second play. And now the university has indirectly exposed the sitting senator and former state AG of neighboring Missouri as an unserious clown of the highest order.
Eric Schmitt is a dolt. This isn’t really news. He was a drooling idiot as Missouri’s attorney general where he proved incapable of contending with the plain text of a statute and succeeded mostly in wasting taxpayer resources pursuing a facially frivolous challenge to void Joe Biden’s electoral votes. He’s since taken his talents to Capitol Hill where he’s been a dangerous, irresponsible malignancy as a senator.
Today, he put his crackerjack lawyering skills to the cause of nailing Jack Smith, accusing the former special prosecutor of conspiring — somehow — with Fulton County DA Fani Willis based on smoking gun texts placing Smith in Atlanta.
Except, you know, none of that is true.
After Smith testified that he did not meet with Willis and doesn’t recall being in Atlanta, Schmitt sprung a perjury trap that Wile E. Coyote would’ve sniffed out as an obvious loser.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024?”
A staffer hoisted a poster board before immediately taking it down. Schmitt offered to give Smith “a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.” Smith asked if he could actually look at the board and Schmitt announced that Smith had already perjured himself. He wrapped up by calling Smith “a total dirtbag.”
Except Smith was NOT in Atlanta. He was, however, in Maryland watching the Iowa Hawkeyes (occasionally referred to as “Hawks”) defeat the Terps on the back of a 38-point effort from then-Hawkeye Caitlin Clark.
Missouri borders Iowa.
This is dumb, yes. But that’s par for the course with Republican officials. But what’s really damning is that a former state AG represented that he had texts that said, “in Atlanta at a Warrior-Hawks game” which they absolutely did not. At best they say “Hawks” and at no point in the process did a supposed lawyer perform even cursory research before accusing a much more respected lawyer of perjury. Work this shoddy is shocking even for a conservative lawyer, which says a lot because the bar for bare competence among red state AGs is already low.
Indeed, it was a Republican AG who once infamously misspelled “Louisiana” in a brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Louisiana. Oh wait, that was ERIC SCHMITT.
Speaking of Louisiana…
Kennedy tried to glom onto Schmitt’s moment of triumph and only managed to bask in the reflected glow of humiliation. Honestly, this is the worst thing to ever happen to a John Kennedy in American history. Unlike Schmitt, Kennedy actually is smart deep down, having gotten degrees from a T14 law school and Oxford. But along the way his elite pedigree became an albatross and he’s adopted the cadence and mannerisms of Foghorn Leghorn. These days he’s largely traded his intellect for a caricature of what a dumb person imagines a smart person to be. For example, the Kennedy relentless yet inane bar exam pub quiz the senator makes judicial nominees endure. Obscure book knowledge? Sure. Practical relevance? No, but it looks “smart” if you don’t know any better.
Anyway, Kennedy ultimately realized he’d put his money on the wrong horse here. Because he’d actually put his money on a jackass.
The Surrender Cobra: a sports phenomenon that — along with getting punked by Iowa — enjoys deep ties to Michigan football.
Senator Katie Britt, a United States Senator whose only claim to fame is getting dragged to hell and back by Scarlett Johansson, realized how badly Schmitt had embarrassed the Republican strategy and allowed us to watch in real-time.
Hang. It. In. The. Louvre.
Even the staffers managed to register high enough on the basic cognitive scale to understand:
There’s a narrative going around that this is a staffer mistake, and let’s put that to bed right now. Obviously the staff failed to flag the problem before Schmitt went out with his pants down, but “accusing DOJ officials of perjury” is not a responsibility that gets farmed out. Schmitt owns this from top to bottom.
While his colleagues at all levels have figured out how badly this went, Schmitt is — it seems — refusing to back down:
After the hearing, Schmitt insisted he’d gotten nothing wrong, but he seemed less sure Smith had committed perjury.
“I don’t know if Jack Smith’s lying or not. It was the only game ― Atlanta was the only NBA game or men’s college basketball game that night at 7:30,” Schmitt told HuffPost.
Look, it’s not anti-Trans bigotry, it’s that Republicans just care so much about protecting women’s sports. So much that they can’t even fathom the possibility that someone might go watch a women’s college basketball game starring the best player in the country that year.
Psst… gang, I’m starting to think that it might just be anti-Trans bigotry.
Also:
What even is this? You are — ostensibly — a professional. For all the times that conservatives invoke the Framers, I’d just once like to hear how they think the authors of the Constitution would feel knowing that the congressional record is filled with comic sans visual aids.
At the end of the day, it was Senator Amy Klobuchar who got the board back in front of the witness, who then remembered the college hoops contest at Maryland.
But Klobuchar had an unfair advantage since, you know, her state also borders Iowa.
From Raw Story:
“That might be the confusion over the names of the team, but perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” Klobuchar told Schmitt.
Schmitt aggressively fired back.
“Whose questioning is this by the way, are you using your time, senator? Is this what this is, are we just having like an open session here? I’m glad you’re trying to rehabilitate the witness, but it’s not your time,” Schmitt said, raising his voice.
“You had the teams wrong, sir!” Klobuchar would eventually explain. It’s cliche at this point, but the fact that liberals managed to get custody of “sports” in the national divorce is an all-timer of a plot twist.
[Note: A number of additions have been made since the original publishing because this story keeps getting funnier]
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.
The post Senator Accuses Jack Smith Of Perjury Because Missouri Lawmaker Too Dumb To Know About The Iowa Hawkeyes appeared first on Above the Law.
First, the Iowa Hawkeyes delivered a demoralizing 20-19 gut punch to the Michigan Wolverines on a last second play. And now the university has indirectly exposed the sitting senator and former state AG of neighboring Missouri as an unserious clown of the highest order.
Eric Schmitt is a dolt. This isn’t really news. He was a drooling idiot as Missouri’s attorney general where he proved incapable of contending with the plain text of a statute and succeeded mostly in wasting taxpayer resources pursuing a facially frivolous challenge to void Joe Biden’s electoral votes. He’s since taken his talents to Capitol Hill where he’s been a dangerous, irresponsible malignancy as a senator.
Today, he put his crackerjack lawyering skills to the cause of nailing Jack Smith, accusing the former special prosecutor of conspiring — somehow — with Fulton County DA Fani Willis based on smoking gun texts placing Smith in Atlanta.
Except, you know, none of that is true.
After Smith testified that he did not meet with Willis and doesn’t recall being in Atlanta, Schmitt sprung a perjury trap that Wile E. Coyote would’ve sniffed out as an obvious loser.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024?”
A staffer hoisted a poster board before immediately taking it down. Schmitt offered to give Smith “a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.” Smith asked if he could actually look at the board and Schmitt announced that Smith had already perjured himself. He wrapped up by calling Smith “a total dirtbag.”
Except Smith was NOT in Atlanta. He was, however, in Maryland watching the Iowa Hawkeyes (occasionally referred to as “Hawks”) defeat the Terps on the back of a 38-point effort from then-Hawkeye Caitlin Clark.
Missouri borders Iowa.
This is dumb, yes. But that’s par for the course with Republican officials. But what’s really damning is that a former state AG represented that he had texts that said, “in Atlanta at a Warrior-Hawks game” which they absolutely did not. At best they say “Hawks” and at no point in the process did a supposed lawyer perform even cursory research before accusing a much more respected lawyer of perjury. Work this shoddy is shocking even for a conservative lawyer, which says a lot because the bar for bare competence among red state AGs is already low.
Indeed, it was a Republican AG who once infamously misspelled “Louisiana” in a brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of Louisiana. Oh wait, that was ERIC SCHMITT.
Speaking of Louisiana…
Kennedy tried to glom onto Schmitt’s moment of triumph and only managed to bask in the reflected glow of humiliation. Honestly, this is the worst thing to ever happen to a John Kennedy in American history. Unlike Schmitt, Kennedy actually is smart deep down, having gotten degrees from a T14 law school and Oxford. But along the way his elite pedigree became an albatross and he’s adopted the cadence and mannerisms of Foghorn Leghorn. These days he’s largely traded his intellect for a caricature of what a dumb person imagines a smart person to be. For example, the Kennedy relentless yet inane bar exam pub quiz the senator makes judicial nominees endure. Obscure book knowledge? Sure. Practical relevance? No, but it looks “smart” if you don’t know any better.
Anyway, Kennedy ultimately realized he’d put his money on the wrong horse here. Because he’d actually put his money on a jackass.
The Surrender Cobra: a sports phenomenon that — along with getting punked by Iowa — enjoys deep ties to Michigan football.
Senator Katie Britt, a United States Senator whose only claim to fame is getting dragged to hell and back by Scarlett Johansson, realized how badly Schmitt had embarrassed the Republican strategy and allowed us to watch in real-time.
Hang. It. In. The. Louvre.
Even the staffers managed to register high enough on the basic cognitive scale to understand:
There’s a narrative going around that this is a staffer mistake, and let’s put that to bed right now. Obviously the staff failed to flag the problem before Schmitt went out with his pants down, but “accusing DOJ officials of perjury” is not a responsibility that gets farmed out. Schmitt owns this from top to bottom.
While his colleagues at all levels have figured out how badly this went, Schmitt is — it seems — refusing to back down:
After the hearing, Schmitt insisted he’d gotten nothing wrong, but he seemed less sure Smith had committed perjury.
“I don’t know if Jack Smith’s lying or not. It was the only game ― Atlanta was the only NBA game or men’s college basketball game that night at 7:30,” Schmitt told HuffPost.
Look, it’s not anti-Trans bigotry, it’s that Republicans just care so much about protecting women’s sports. So much that they can’t even fathom the possibility that someone might go watch a women’s college basketball game starring the best player in the country that year.
Psst… gang, I’m starting to think that it might just be anti-Trans bigotry.
Also:
What even is this? You are — ostensibly — a professional. For all the times that conservatives invoke the Framers, I’d just once like to hear how they think the authors of the Constitution would feel knowing that the congressional record is filled with comic sans visual aids.
At the end of the day, it was Senator Amy Klobuchar who got the board back in front of the witness, who then remembered the college hoops contest at Maryland.
But Klobuchar had an unfair advantage since, you know, her state also borders Iowa.
From Raw Story:
“That might be the confusion over the names of the team, but perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully,” Klobuchar told Schmitt.
Schmitt aggressively fired back.
“Whose questioning is this by the way, are you using your time, senator? Is this what this is, are we just having like an open session here? I’m glad you’re trying to rehabilitate the witness, but it’s not your time,” Schmitt said, raising his voice.
“You had the teams wrong, sir!” Klobuchar would eventually explain. It’s cliche at this point, but the fact that liberals managed to get custody of “sports” in the national divorce is an all-timer of a plot twist.
[Note: A number of additions have been made since the original publishing because this story keeps getting funnier]
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.
The post Senator Accuses Jack Smith Of Perjury Because Missouri Lawmaker Too Dumb To Know About The Iowa Hawkeyes appeared first on Above the Law.
