Senate Judiciary Democrats are demanding their Republican colleagues issue an apology to Jack Smith after a Missouri senator fumbled his questioning of the former Justice Department special counsel during a committee hearing last week.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) tried to connect Smith — a former DOJ official best known for his 2022 prosecution of President Donald Trump — to a Georgia district attorney by blowing up photos of text messages that he thought placed Smith at a basketball game in Atlanta.
The 10 Democratic signatories said the committee’s Republican majority violated Senate rules by not sharing all records used to question Smith with the minority.
“We write to object to the Committee violating Senate rules by failing to provide committee records to the minority in advance of the hearing … As of the date of this letter, we still have not received these records,” the senators wrote in a letter addressed to committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
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“We request that you immediately provide these and all other documents that you have withheld, commit to fully complying with Senate rules in the future, and apologize to Mr. Smith on behalf of the Committee for the unacceptable personal attacks and false accusations of perjury he faced during this hearing,” the letter said.
When The Washington Sun asked Grassley’s office if it plans to issue an apology to Smith, a spokesperson flagged a post on X in which the senator wrote that “Jack Smith should apologize for taking the bank records of 42 Iowans & 4,782 Americans.”
The Democratic signatories, led by ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), maintain that neither Schmitt nor Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) have produced documents related to their questioning of Smith — which they say constitutes a “particularly egregious breach” of Senate committee rules.
Schmitt tried to place Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 in an attempt to tie him to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who launched an investigation into the president’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia.
The state court system disqualified Willis from the case after details emerged of her affair with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor hired for the 2020 election interference case — a transgression Schmitt pointed out.
The Missouri Republican even had a large sign made showing text messages he thought placed Smith at the game next to large photos of Willis and Wade. Schmitt accused Smith of perjuring himself and said he would “go down as a total dirtbag.”
Smith appeared confused before Sen. Amy Klobuchar jumped in to assert that her Republican colleague had likely confused the Atlanta Hawks with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. The clip of the incident circulated widely on the internet, with some senators appearing gobsmacked while watching the episode unfold.
“Jack Smith deserves an apology from my Republican colleagues who falsely accused him of perjury,” Durbin wrote Thursday on X. “This shameful episode was an embarrassment to the Committee that demands an explanation.”
Schimitt has attempted to downplay the viral gaffe.
“Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?” Schmitt told CNN. “We had information he was at a basketball game. There was only one NBA game that night which is why I asked him if he was in Atlanta.”
Smith has faced Trump’s fury for overseeing the investigations into the president’s retention of potentially classified materials, which led to a raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. Smith also led the case against Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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