Opinion: A Hawk is not the same as a Hawkeye

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testifies Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill. Allison Robbert/AP hide caption

Allison Robbert/AP

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri may not have been exactly hawk-eyed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week when he asked former special counsel Jack Smith if he had gone to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in February 2024. Schmitt implied that Smith met up in Atlanta with the district attorney who was investigating election fraud charges against then-former President Trump.

Smith said, "I definitely did not go to a Hawks game, I am sure of that," and Sen. Schmitt replied, "I think you've already perjured yourself." Then he called him a "villain" and more names I'd rather not repeat at breakfast time on a Saturday morning.

Further questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota established that Smith had been to a basketball game that night, but not in Atlanta. He was in College Park, Md., to watch the University of Maryland Terps take on Caitlin Clark and the University of Iowa.

The Iowa Hawkeyes. Not the Atlanta Hawks.

Sen. Klobuchar, a Democrat, suggested to Sen. Schmitt, a Republican, "That might be the confusion over the names of the team, but perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully. … I think people should have their facts straight before they accuse people … ."

The names of sports teams can be confounding. If I invite you to a Panthers game would you expect to meet me for a kickoff in North Carolina or a puck drop in Florida?

But was Sen. Schmitt's misstatement an innocent gaffe to be laughed off, like then-Vice President Dan Quayle inadvertently giving the wrong spelling for "potato" to a New Jersey sixth grader, or was it a public effort to discredit Smith with information that would not be hard to fact check?

"We had information, of course, about him being at a basketball game," Schmitt told KTVI-TV in St. Louis the next day. "My job is to ask the questions, and his job is to answer the questions. …

"But I guess the one thing that Jack Smith and I can agree on is that we're a fan of college sports and college basketball." This is as close as the senator came to saying he'd made a mistake.

For the record: the Iowa Hawkeyes won that night, 93 to 85. Caitlin Clark scored 38 points. And I'll bet everyone who watched remembers exactly where they were that night.