Former special counsel Jack Smith faced sharp questioning from Republican senators on Tuesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on his investigations of President Donald Trump. The most widely shared moment came when Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri accused Smith of lying under oath, only for the accusation to run into a problem involving two very different basketball teams.
Schmitt questioned Smith about where he had been on Feb. 3, 2024. He suggested Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks NBA game in Atlanta and raised the possibility that Smith had been in contact with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Smith denied attending an Atlanta Hawks game and said he had not traveled to Atlanta in his role as special counsel.
The exchange quickly changed direction when Smith explained that he had attended a women’s college basketball game at the University of Maryland that day. The game involved the Iowa Hawkeyes, whose star player at the time was Caitlin Clark.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota pointed out the apparent source of the confusion. Schmitt appeared to have mixed up the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes.
That distinction mattered because the accusation was tied to Smith’s location. The Atlanta Hawks played in Georgia, while the Iowa women’s team played Maryland in College Park, Maryland, on Feb. 3, 2024.
The Associated Press reported that Schmitt had questioned Smith about whether he had gone to an Atlanta Hawks game and suggested that the trip could have placed him near Willis. Smith rejected the premise. Klobuchar later highlighted the Hawks-Hawkeyes mix-up during the hearing.
The moment became one of the main stories from a much broader and more serious hearing about Smith’s work as special counsel.
Smith was appointed in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. He took over federal investigations involving Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results and Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office.
Those investigations led to two federal criminal cases against Trump. Smith later ended the prosecutions after Trump won the 2024 election and returned to the presidency, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Smith defended his work and rejected Republican claims that his investigations were politically motivated.
Reuters reported that Smith told senators he would not be silenced by threats of prosecution. He said his decisions had been based on evidence and that he would have taken the same approach regardless of the political party of the person being investigated.
Republican senators used the hearing to challenge Smith’s investigative methods.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa focused in part on records obtained during Smith’s investigation. Grassley said Smith’s team had collected financial information connected to thousands of people who had donated to Trump or Republican organizations.
The committee also examined subpoenas for telephone records involving Republican lawmakers. Smith defended those requests as part of an effort to understand communications connected to events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith has said the records did not include the content of lawmakers’ phone calls. They included information such as the time and duration of calls. Republicans have argued that the investigation went too far and improperly swept up the records of lawmakers and other Americans.
Grassley also questioned Smith about donor information and financial records. A Senate Judiciary Committee statement said Smith confirmed that his team had subpoenaed financial information as part of the investigation.
The dispute over those subpoenas is separate from Schmitt’s basketball accusation, but both became part of the same hearing. Republicans presented the hearing as oversight of what they describe as abuses by the special counsel’s office. Democrats defended Smith and accused Republicans of trying to discredit investigations involving Trump.
The hearing also included heated personal exchanges.
Schmitt strongly criticized Smith and questioned whether he had been truthful in previous testimony. But the basketball portion of his questioning drew immediate attention because the factual basis for the allegation appeared to collapse during the exchange itself.
The Washington Post reported that the mistake involved confusing the Iowa Hawkeyes with the Atlanta Hawks. Several social media posts promoting the allegation were later removed after the error became clear.
The episode does not resolve the larger disputes surrounding Smith’s investigations. Republican lawmakers are continuing to examine subpoenas, phone records, donor information and other investigative steps taken by his office.
Smith, meanwhile, has continued to defend the legality of his actions.
He told the committee that his office did not target people because of their political beliefs. He has also said that investigators followed Justice Department rules while examining conduct connected to the 2020 election and classified government records.
The Senate Judiciary Committee titled Tuesday’s hearing “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters.” That title reflects the position of the Republican-led committee, not a finding that Smith committed a crime.
No criminal charge against Smith was announced at the hearing.
Republicans have previously referred allegations involving Smith to the Justice Department and accused him of misleading Congress. Smith’s lawyers have disputed those claims and have said his prior testimony was truthful.
The sharp disagreement was visible throughout Tuesday’s hearing. Republican senators portrayed Smith’s investigations as an example of federal law enforcement being used against political opponents. Democratic senators argued that Smith was being attacked for investigating conduct supported by evidence.
For many viewers, however, the most memorable part of the hearing was the basketball exchange.
Schmitt’s accusation depended on Smith being at an Atlanta Hawks game in Georgia. Smith instead described attending an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland. Once that distinction was established, the proposed connection between the basketball game and a possible Atlanta meeting was no longer supported by the location evidence presented during that exchange.
The hearing continued beyond that moment, with senators questioning Smith about subpoenas, investigative decisions and the two Trump cases.
The broader political and legal fight over Smith’s work is likely to continue in Congress. Tuesday’s testimony showed that the arguments remain deeply divided, even as one of the hearing’s most dramatic accusations was undercut by a simple mistake over the names of two basketball teams.