GOP Senator Tries to Trap Jack Smith—and Gets Every Detail Wrong

In case you needed any evidence that Republicans have absolutely no dirt on former special counsel Jack Smith, look no further.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Senator Eric Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024, in Atlanta. For context, Schmitt added, that was the day after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis revealed her affair with prosecutor Nathan Wade. 

“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” Smith answered, and suggested that he hadn’t spent any time in Atlanta, and had never met with Willis or Wade. 

Then Schmitt accused the former special counsel of perjury. 

The Missouri Republican’s staff displayed a poster board that the senator claimed showed a series of text messages from Smith’s team that allegedly discussed his plans to attend the Hawks game. Almost as soon as it was put up, it was pulled down again. 

Smith was unable to offer a response to the accusation, noting, “You just took it down really quick.” Schmitt refused to hold the board up again, instead calling Smith a “dirtbag.”

Later, Smith circled back to clarify that he remembered attending a college basketball game in February 2024 between the University of Maryland and the University of Iowa during which Caitlin Clark had played.  

Senator Amy Klobuchar then offered a possibility: “Could it then be that University of Iowa was the Hawkeyes?” she said. 

Schmitt interjected that Klobuchar was trying to “rehabilitate the witness.” He insisted that the text messages—which again, he’d not allowed anyone to review—“could have obviously been related to the prosecution that was coordinated in his office in Atlanta.”

“I think people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone of being a dirtbag, and not get the teams wrong,” Klobuchar said. 

Shortly after, Klobuchar was able to confirm Smith’s story. 

“The game was in fact in Maryland, Mr. Smith,” she said. “And I would just say, for a U.S. senator to have false information and imply, based on a confusion about the name of a team, which I knew knowing my Midwestern sports, and imply that you were in another city, that you were somehow involved that day in what was happening in Georgia and then call you a dirtbag is something that deserves an apology.”

A closer look at the supposedly damning text messages Schmitt attempted to display showed that they made no mention of the “Hawks”—failing further to back up his far-flung line of questioning.

Republicans appear so desperate to attack the former official, who says he found proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump committed “serious crimes” related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and steal classified documents to advance his own career, that they are willing to resort to absurd antics and allege ill-informed conspiracy theories.

Later Tuesday afternoon, Schmitt attempted to defend his face-plant moment in an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show. 

“It was the only NBA or NCAA’s Men’s game going on that time in Atlanta. He claimed later that he was at another game,” Schmitt said. “My job is to ask the questions, he’s already—and if that’s what his answer is, then that’s what his answer is.”

Schmitt admitted that he wasn’t really asking fact-finding questions, but was looking for a gotcha moment. 

“Jack Smith has lied under oath time and time again, and so the purpose of today is just to get him to answer a bunch of questions and to see if he ensnares himself in more lies because he’s done that before,” Schmitt said. 

But it seems that the lawmaker’s lazy research—and conservatives’ total dismissal of women’s sports—got in the way.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration’s brand new, ultra-secure, “damn good” artificial intelligence chatbot can’t be hacked—yet.

The new technology, hosted on America.gov, was unveiled during a summit Tuesday morning. It’s supposed to act as the new face of the federal government, a way for the general public to access publicly available government information in a familiar chatbot format.

In relatively brief remarks, Donald Trump pledged that the access point was built with cutting-edge technology that would not save or risk user data.

“With America.gov, for the first time in history, the government is offering an experience that matches and in some ways even exceeds the state of the art,” Trump said.

“It’s built from the ground up with your privacy and security in mind,” Trump said. “They’ve used a brand new technology—it’s absolutely brand new. It’s amazing, people don’t even have access to it for the most part, to ensure that your personal information is not collected or stored and your conversation disappears when you leave and everything stays totally private.”

But his confidence in the burgeoning portal only extended so far.

“Cannot, in theory, be hacked into,” Trump continued, ad-libbing that when “they figure a way to do that, we’ll end it.”

“Because they always figure a way, right?” Trump said. “If anything does happen. We think it might not happen.”

The site was created by Airbnb co-founder and U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia with the intention of centralizing numerous government databases and websites for easier public consumption, creating a pathway for users to access federal information without needing to navigate the “maze” of government websites.

The administration said that the platform could eventually be used as a waypoint for passport applications, name changes, campsite reservations, and even Medicare plans.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing right-wing backlash over an ad featuring a white man playing video games who got off welfare thanks to the state’s work requirement. 

Several conservative personalities lashed out against the ad on social media for depicting “Brad,” who chooses not to work and plays video games on his couch instead, over the right-wing stereotypes of women and people of color living off of government assistance.  

“This Republican ad calling out welfare leeches uses a young white male named ‘Brad’ as the villain. Meanwhile, back in reality, women are significantly more likely to be on welfare than men. And black people are astronomically more likely to be on welfare than white people. So the number of single young white male ‘Brads’ abusing the welfare system is minuscule,” posted Matt Walsh. “Practically non-existent. But of course Republicans don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain. Even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand.” 

Failed far-right Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback also disliked the ad and threw in some misogyny with his racism. 

“White men named Brad don’t typically commit welfare fraud,” Fishback wrote. “I’d recommend you start with the baby-momma with a BMW who just got back from her Carnival Cruise.”

“Almost zero white men under the age of 62 are on welfare. 69% of all immigrant classes are on welfare. The GOP is filled with anti White leftist,” wrote right-wing poster Paul (@WomanDefiner). 

Right-wing influencer RAMZPAUL said Sanders “needs to apologize for her blood libel.”

“Sarah Huckabee never had a real job. Her daddy was a two-time governor. She never worked in the private sector. She never served in the military. Her entire qualification was her daddy,” the influencer added. “Maybe she should be cut off the taxpayer funds and get a job as a waitress. She may also want to cut down on the Cheetos.”

Sanders doubled down on the post on Tuesday, posting, “Some critics online don’t like my welfare work requirement ad. Next thing you know they’ll say I should have used cookies instead of cheese balls. If you are able-bodied you should not collect welfare simply because you choose not to work. Period.” 

Despite MAGA’s outrage, statistically in Arkansas, between 52 and 54 percent of food stamps, or SNAP, recipients in the state are white, as are 57.8 percent of those on Medicaid. But Sanders’s program won’t solve any problems, as adding work requirements doesn’t reduce poverty, and in some cases, makes people poorer. Regarding programs like health care assistance, most recipients are already working. 

And, as one commentator pointed out, Sanders has only ever held political jobs thanks to her father, former Arkansas Governor and current U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and has never had to apply for a real job herself. 

Former special counsel Jack Smith swears that President Donald Trump committed “serious crimes.”

In his opening remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Smith reiterated the findings of his two indictments against the president of the United States.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith said. “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.”

“The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

“After leaving office in January of 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive national security information was held in a bathroom and ballroom where events and gatherings took place,” he said.

Smith’s team determined that Trump kept a hold on those documents in order to help advance his business interests.

The former special counsel’s statements were practically identical to his January testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that his investigations uncovered proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump had engaged in criminal activity.

In December, Smith testified for eight hours in a closed-door hearing before the House committee. He has long sought to testify in a public hearing, but was rebuffed by Republicans until Tuesday in favor of one behind closed doors.

Utah Senator Mike Lee was the only lawmaker to vote against a bipartisan bill that would have banned the demolition of presidential memorials such as the Kennedy Center without congressional approval.

The bill in question—the Protecting Presidential Memorials Act—was the brainchild of Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. The Democratic-Republican duo tried to pass the bill via unanimous consent, a procedure that fast-tracks votes and skips debates on noncontroversial matters by only passing a measure if the entire chamber votes the same way.

Lee, however, apparently did not feel that protecting presidential memorials was a pertinent issue, despite the president’s recent machinations surrounding the Kennedy Center and the ensuing looming threat of the historic theater’s destruction.

“Unfortunately, a colleague objected to this common-sense bill,” Merkley wrote in a statement after the vote. “Trump’s threats are straight out of the authoritarian playbook and should infuriate every American who values our nation’s history and the rule of law. Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars putting Trump’s name on memorials and monuments as if he is a king, we should be focused on putting money back into the pockets of working families and honoring America’s greatest cultural institutions, not destroying them.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump has worked tirelessly to plaster his name on the Kennedy Center. Part of that effort included replacing the center’s board with a spate of Trumpian loyalists (and appointing himself as its chairman), and leveraging that power to find avenues to affix his name and brand on the revered performing arts space or its grounds. He has been profoundly unsuccessful in doing so, however: Trump has faced numerous legal obstacles in his quest to rename the Kennedy Center, in no small part because the site itself is under the jurisdiction of Congress.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Kennedy Center needs him—and his brand—to survive. Yet tax documents obtained by Zeteo earlier this month disproved that conspiracy, revealing that it was actually Trump’s intimate involvement in the building’s affairs that triggered the beginning of its rapid decline.

After the Monday night vote, Trump’s team filed an appeal in the legal saga reiterating his claims. Justice Department attorneys argued that “without appropriate recognition” of Trump, “the Kennedy Center will be back where it was at the beginning—a financially insolvent facility and a decrepit, dilapidated, crumbling building, that is bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and that continues to race toward physical and financial ruin.”

“The stakes are existential,” the attorneys posited.