Brit Hume’s name fits this one because the key fact is simple: Eric Schmitt used Justice Department texts in Jack Smith’s hearing after Republican staff warned the material was unvetted. The exchange collapsed within minutes on C-SPAN, and the claim Schmitt was pressing never held up in public view.
Schmitt said the texts showed Jack Smith had colluded with a Georgia state prosecutor and suggested Smith may have conspired with Fani Willis. He also insisted that Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in February 2024.
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans
Those texts reached Schmitt only after his staff asked for material linking Smith’s investigation and Willis’ probe. Republican staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee had already told Schmitt’s team the texts were “unvetted” and that it was their job to verify them before using them in Jack Smith’s hearing.
Chuck Grassley’s team had assembled a memo with key information for the hearing, but Grassley’s staff left the texts out. They also did not share the texts with Democratic senators before the hearing began.
C-SPAN and Capitol Hill
The live setting made the failure immediate. C-SPAN cameras carried the exchange as it happened, and the allegation imploded within minutes.
That speed matters because the dispute was not about a minor procedural point. It was about whether the records Schmitt used could carry the weight of an accusation that Jack Smith and Fani Willis had coordinated against Republicans.
The backdrop is broader than one hearing exchange. The Department of Justice had shared materials with GOP staff ahead of the hearing, and Republicans on Capitol Hill were trying to figure out how Schmitt’s bombshell fell apart. Earlier Republican use of internal communications from Smith’s office to accuse him of wiretapping GOP members of Congress had also failed to match the records.
What remains on the page is the gap between the warning and the act. Schmitt’s team was told the texts were unvetted, then used them anyway, and the hearing produced a live collapse instead of evidence sturdy enough to survive the first round of scrutiny.
