Eric Schmitt Senate testimony on Tuesday turned on text messages he had been warned were unvetted, yet he used them to accuse Jack Smith of secret meetings in Atlanta. The texts did not show that; they referred to plans to attend a University of Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game in Maryland.
Senate Judiciary Committee texts
Schmitt told the hearing that the texts proved Smith had planned to sneak to Atlanta to meet with Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. Instead, the messages pointed to a basketball trip, not a meeting, undercutting the claim he pressed in public.
The Department of Justice had shared materials with GOP staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee before the hearing. Chuck Grassley’s team compiled most of the important information into a memo, but it did not include the texts Schmitt later used. Grassley also did not share those texts with Democratic senators before the hearing.
Chuck Grassley memo
A senior Republican senator said, “I’m pretty sure the White House asked him to do it.” The same senator added, “And, probably, the White House provided the material.” Those remarks point to a broader dispute over who assembled the packet Schmitt relied on and how much review it received before he used it.
The hearing episode matters because the attack depended on a factual mismatch: Schmitt tied the messages to Atlanta, but the content described the University of Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game in Maryland. That left the exchange centered less on what Smith did than on whether the materials presented to the committee had been checked closely enough before Schmitt put them on the record.
