WASHINGTON, D.C. — A top Republican senator suspects Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) was handed his bad intel directly by the White House before his possibly career-ending Jack Smith slam dunk.
Schmitt was massively humiliated as his gotcha moment — unveiling proof that Donald Trump's prosecutor Smith had secretly traveled to Atlanta is 2024 to collude with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to snare Trump — dramatically fell apart on the Senate floor Tuesday.
He'd claimed Smith had used an Atlanta Hawks game as cover for the meeting. It turned out, Smith had actually been at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland.
“I'm pretty sure the White House asked him to do it,” a senior Republican U.S. senator told Raw Story Wednesday, asking that their name not be used so they could speak without fear of political retribution.
“And, probably, the White House provided the material.”
Raw Story’s request for comment was not returned by Schmitt’s office.
The senator had been hyped in an Axios article Tuesday morning as a possible contender to be vice president in 2028. By Tuesday afternoon, many said the episode had blown his chances.
Republicans were still embarrassed by the Senate hearing show Wednesday.
“Of course I did, of course I did,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) whispered to Raw Story when asked if she saw it. “Of course I did.”
"There's something to be said about the staff work, and verifying before we do something like that publicly.
“I know who the Iowa Hawkeyes are."
To the Democrat who helped unravel Schmitt’s mistake in real-time during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, the episode shows just how deeply held the beliefs of the MAGA movement are — whether true or debunked.
“It was so over the top,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — who served eight years as a prosecutor before coming to Congress — told Raw Story. “The fact that when [Jack Smith] said he wasn't at the original Hawks games, that they just don't believe him shows how far they're taking these conspiracy theories.
“He's under oath. He's a prosecutor. He's not going to take a risk of saying, ‘Oh no, I wasn't there,’ and that they didn't believe it and then change course — you know, adjust to your moment,” Klobuchar said while riding an elevator in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.
“You have to be very deep into that conspiracy theory to go that far.”