Who was the real 'dirtbag' in the Jack Smith hearing?
Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is sworn in before testifying in Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. Credit: AP/Allison Robbert
Sen. Eric Schmitt's questioning of former special prosecutor Jack Smith in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing turned into a colossal MAGA boomerang on Tuesday. In trying to destroy Smith's credibility, the Republican from Missouri — who was touted this week as a possible future vice-presidential candidate — managed to undermine his own.
Posing himself as the smooth interrogator, Schmitt attempted to question Smith regarding travel to an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024. Based on Schmitt's words, this was somehow supposed to lead to a "gotcha" moment that would indicate Smith improperly met with Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney who presented a racketeering indictment of President Donald Trump. Willis' effort was separate from Smith's investigation of Trump's pressuring Georgia officials to fake the results of the lost 2020 presidential race in that state.
One problem is there was no evidence of such a meeting. Smith never attended a Hawks game. He explained that he did attend an Iowa Hawkeyes college basketball game in Maryland on Feb. 3, 2024, where he saw star Caitlin Clark play.
As Schmitt's blunder emerged in real time, news cameras showed fellow GOP Sen. Katie Britt looking as if she was witnessing a car crash.
Schmitt's amateurism was laughable. But the ugliness was serious. He'd suggested during the hearing that the unrattled Smith was a "villain" about to commit perjury and called him a "dirtbag."
Trump's second-term use of the federal government to target his perceived nemeses for defamation or prosecution may be a farce, but it's a dangerous one. Former top health official Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment before the Senate's Homeland Security Committee regarding COVID-19 to sidestep an obvious perjury trap. Ex-FBI Director James Comey is under indictment by the Trump-dominated Justice Department for posting on social media a photo of seashells with the numbers "8647."
During Tuesday's hearing, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) calmly shook her head amid the episode and urged Schmitt to apologize. He didn't.
She addressed Smith: "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 — that you were in another city, that you were somehow involved that day in what was happening in Georgia," Klobuchar said to Smith. "And then call you a ‘dirtbag' deserves an apology."
Schmitt responded weakly that it was his job "to ask questions" — and stuck to blasting Smith, whom he later claimed "lied before Congress."
It was McCarthyism meets "Veep."
For his part, Smith said his own investigation showed "beyond reasonable doubt" that Trump engaged in "serious crimes." He left the hearing without a scratch on his reputation.
It is clear by now that the Republican Party from top to bottom has become a subsidiary of the White House that the current occupant directs as he wishes, with the GOP majority in Congress doing his bidding. This must be why Schmitt, known as a "Trump whisperer," showed no contrition.
And so, barely a month before Election Day as the Senate and House majorities seek to survive at the polls, this marked a waste of precious time and attention to matters affecting not the voters but Trump's thirst for retribution against those who once vexed him.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
