Jack Smith Was Warned About Perjury in a Senate Hearing

Sen. Eric Schmitt tried to place the former special counsel at an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024. Smith pointed to a different basketball game on the same date, and the public record matched his account.

For a few minutes during a tense Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the questioning appeared to be moving toward a serious accusation: that former special counsel Jack Smith had lied under oath about where he had been on a specific night in February 2024.

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri asked Smith whether he had attended an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024. Smith said no. He also said he did not believe he had been in Atlanta that day and denied meeting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis or special prosecutor Nathan Wade while serving as special counsel.

Schmitt then told Smith that he had text messages that, in his view, placed Smith at a Warriors-Hawks game in Atlanta. He warned Smith to take a moment so he would not “perjure yourself,” and later suggested Smith had already done so.

But the exchange changed when Smith recalled a different basketball game.

He said he remembered going to a University of Maryland women’s basketball game in February 2024 where Caitlin Clark was playing for Iowa. That detail turned out to be important because Iowa played Maryland in College Park on February 3 — the very date at the center of Schmitt’s questions.

Two basketball games on the same night

The confusion centered on two teams whose names sound similar but whose games were hundreds of miles apart.

The Atlanta Hawks did host the Golden State Warriors on February 3, 2024, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. The Hawks won 141-134 in overtime despite Stephen Curry scoring 60 points.

But Iowa’s women’s basketball team — the Hawkeyes — was also playing that night. Iowa defeated Maryland 93-85 at the XFINITY Center in College Park. Clark finished with 38 points, 12 assists and six rebounds.

That second game matched the event Smith said he remembered attending.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota picked up on the distinction during the hearing. After Smith described the Iowa-Maryland game, she pointed to Iowa’s team name — the Hawkeyes — and questioned whether that was the source of the apparent mix-up.

Smith also said U.S. Marshals had been with him and that his attendance could be checked.

The exchange quickly became the most widely discussed portion of the hearing because the accusation had been framed in unusually direct terms. Schmitt was not merely asking Smith to clarify a travel schedule. He had explicitly raised perjury while trying to connect Smith to Atlanta at a politically sensitive moment.

Why Atlanta mattered to Schmitt’s questioning

The location mattered because Willis and Wade were involved in Georgia’s state election-interference prosecution of Donald Trump and several allies.

On February 2, 2024, Willis acknowledged in a court filing that she and Wade had developed a personal relationship. She denied that the relationship created a financial conflict or provided a legal basis to remove her from the case.

Schmitt’s questions appeared designed to test whether Smith had been in Atlanta the following day and whether there had been contact or coordination between the federal special counsel’s office and the Georgia prosecutors.

Smith denied meeting Willis or Wade while serving as special counsel.

Nothing presented during the basketball exchange established that Smith had attended the Hawks game, met Willis or Wade that day, or traveled to Atlanta for such a meeting. The public basketball schedules instead aligned with Smith’s recollection of attending the Iowa-Maryland game in College Park.

The hearing was about much more than basketball

The September 29 hearing was officially titled “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters.” Smith was the sole listed witness.

Republican senators used the hearing to challenge his investigative methods, including subpoenas that obtained phone toll records connected to lawmakers and other information gathered during the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley argued that Smith’s operation had overreached and improperly swept up information involving Republicans, donors and others. Smith rejected the characterization that his investigations were politically driven and said his office followed Justice Department rules and sought evidence relevant to potential criminal conduct.

Democrats on the committee defended the core legitimacy of Smith’s investigations while also asking about the handling of lawmakers’ records. Smith said toll records were metadata rather than the content of calls and argued that the information was relevant because investigators had evidence that Trump and allies contacted senators as Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election results.

The broader arguments remained sharply partisan. Republicans portrayed the investigations as an abuse of federal power, while Democrats said attacks on Smith were intended to discredit prosecutions that had been based on evidence gathered by career investigators and prosecutors.

What happened after the exchange

The moment spread quickly across television and social media. Klobuchar called on Schmitt to apologize for raising a perjury accusation while working from what she described as a mistaken reading of the basketball reference.

Schmitt did not accept that characterization. After the hearing, he defended the questioning as part of the fact-finding purpose of congressional oversight and joked that Smith was apparently a Caitlin Clark fan.

That left two very different interpretations of the confrontation. Schmitt maintained that asking aggressive questions was justified. His critics argued that the accusation moved ahead of the evidence and that the basic location check should have happened first.

What the underlying records show is narrower and clearer.

There really was a Warriors-Hawks game in Atlanta on February 3, 2024. There was also an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland that same night. Smith identified the latter during the hearing, and its date, location and featured player matched his recollection.

That is why the exchange shifted so dramatically. A question that initially appeared to place Smith in Atlanta instead highlighted how much depended on identifying the correct basketball team.

The hearing continued for hours on far more consequential legal and investigative questions. But the brief dispute over “Hawks” and “Hawkeyes” became the moment many viewers remembered — because a single factual distinction changed the meaning of the accusation in real time.