After last week’s Senate Judiciary hearing fiasco, where Jack Smith ran circles around recalcitrant Republicans (again), top Senate Democrats now demand that committee chair Chuck Grassley formally apologize to former Special Counsel Jack Smith on behalf of his GOP colleagues.
Lest we forget, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt tried to “trap” Jack Smith with perjury by accusing Smith of secretly attending an NBA game in Atlanta to conspire with local prosecutors about bringing charges against Donald Trump in the Fani Willis case.
This is how it broke down for anyone playing catch-up. When Smith was questioned at a September 29th Senate Hearing, Schmitt asked whether Smith went to an NBA game in Atlanta in 2024, where the Golden State Warriors faced the Hawks.
Smith denied going to the game altogether, and Schmitt responded, “I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it, so you don’t, you know…perjure yourself.”
Next, a staff member showed an enlarged poster displaying text messages from Smith’s team to argue that the special counsel was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA game between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors. According to Schmitt and his crack legal team, the game was scheduled around the same time local prosecutor Fani Willis, who was working to convict Trump over his 2020 election subversion scheme, was facing damaging questions about her conduct.
While Jack Smith appeared stunned at the hearing due to the complete idiocy of the line of questioning, Republicans took the opportunity to seize on Smith’s confusion in an attempt to spin it as evidence of some kind of guilt. It was later revealed that Schmitt mixed up the basketball teams after Smith admitted he went to a game in Maryland in 2024, where the Iowa Hawkeyes were playing.
When the issue of falsely accusing a witness comes into play, and we examine all of the players in the room, including Schmitt himself, who received his JD from Saint Louis University School of Law in 2000, the notion that it was all a big mistake becomes completely ludicrous. Add to that the intentionally planted story in Axios, posted during Schmitt’s supposed gotcha moment, that touts Schmitt as the next VP option for JD Vance, and you have a real-time attempt by a sitting Senator, bound by a legal license to do better.
It’s interesting to note that US Senator Eric Schmitt’s legal staff primarily consists of two dedicated legal counsels, according to the Federalist Society: Ethan Harper, who serves as Chief Counsel for Senator Schmitt and the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and Andrew J. Ceonzo, who serves as counsel for Senator Schmitt and the subcommittee. Harper, who was no doubt the last line of defense for Schmitt’s indefensible scheme, received his JD from Harvard Law School, where he served as President of the Harvard Federalist Society. Regardless, no formal Senate ethics complaints have been filed against Schmitt or his team, and neither the Missouri nor the Washington, D.C., Bar Associations have launched formal inquiries.
The letter from Democrats today, spearheaded by ranking member Dick Durbin, demands that ranking Senator Chuck Grassley turn over all underlying records Senator Schmitt used during last month’s hearing to make the false allegations against Smith. According to top Democrats, the entire exchange “caused needless confusion, slowed down the business of the Committee, introduced the possibility that false information would be entered uncontested into the record, and created an embarrassing stain on one of the most important committees in Congress.”
While Republicans in Congress have been steadfastly working to undermine Jack Smith and his work charging then-former President Donald Trump with election interference in the 2020 election, this latest letter marks an escalation by Democrats to keep the Schmitt wound wide open for Republicans as we head into the Midterm Elections.
You can read the entire letter from top Senate Democrats here:
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines and analyst for BBC radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @girlsreallyrule.
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Not to be Debbie Downer but what is the chance Grassley pays one iota of attention to this letter??? Give me some reason to believe it will matter!!!
U.S. Senator Charles Ernest Grassley was elected as IA-#3 U.S. District Congressman from Jan. 3rd. 1975 to Jan.3rd 1981. He then became a U.S. Senator for Iowa and has steadfastly held that position since.
Imagine then using the taxpayers’ dollars to scheme and collude with the most corrupt president and his administration in the history of this 250-year-old young-ish country. To protect presidential pedophiles, a right-wing evangelical ‘golden boy’ vice president, xenophobic fascist fanatic WH deputy chief of staff; illegitimate/unqualified secretaries of departments of defense, homeland security, FBI, Department of Commerce, et al. Every single cabinet head needed to go through this committee and Grassley green-lighted all of them. And then to gaily agree to try to do a gotcha moment that turned Schmidt into a ‘dip Schmidt’ moment.
And this is also totally embarrassing as supposedly a ‘game game fan’ for 93 year old Grassley because the Iowa Hawkeyes with Caitlyn Clark (then the hottest collegiate player in Women’s basketball history) were playing Big Ten rival University of Maryland. I mean, Grassley (despite being a U. of Northern Iowa ‘Panther’ alumni along with his wife Barbara) should have checked Schmidt’s ‘schmitt-y’ snare trap.
To use the Judiciary Committee for such wasteful theatrics to put Jack Smith under the spotlight (correction: U.S. Rand Paul did the same thing to Dr. Anthony Fauci as Chair of the Homeland Security and Gov. Affairs Committee) in order to create juvenile kangaroo court-like theatrics is so angering to Iowans. What an awful yellowed greasy stain of a man he has left upon our state.