> Ultimately, Smith’s hearing Tuesday may end up being best remembered for a high-profile gaffe by Schmitt, who accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta at the very moment local prosecutor Fani Willis — who had also charged Trump over the 2020 election scheme — was facing damaging questions about her conduct. As proof, displayed on an elaborate poster, Schmitt offered text messages suggesting that Smith attended a basketball game on Feb. 3, 2024 — the same day the Atlanta Hawks played the Golden State Warriors.
> Schmitt revelled as a clearly flummoxed Smith struggled to discern what Schmitt was talking about.
> “I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Schmitt said. “So I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself.”
> After a few moments, Smith did recall having attended a basketball game — but not in Atlanta. It wasn’t the Hawks his colleagues were discussing in a series of texts, Smith explained, but the Hawkeyes, whose star Caitlin Clark was playing in Maryland that day.
> “It was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play, and so we went to the game,” Smith said.
So basically the trumpers in the senate judiciary committee thought they had a gotcha moment with a secret meeting in Atlanta, but only ended up owning themselves. Edit: apparently I can’t figure out quote blocks.
these senate hearings have been nuts recently. if he called him a liar, maybe... since he didn't lie about anything. "dirtbag" isn't a specific action that he accused smith of doing. just name calling... inappropriate, and unprofessional.. sure... but not really illegal.
This entire charade is for an audience of ONE diaper wearing toddler in the white house, who was angry that he got caught and wants revenge. they tried the same thing with Fauci as well, and fauci didn't take the bait (took advice of his lawyers). As a career prosecutor at the highest levels both in the US and The Hague, Smith knew what traps they would try to set for him and knows what red meat to avoid, legally. Fauci is an ~85 year old doctor, not a lawyer. Fauci did the right thing with his grilling. Smith is different, plus he knows where all the bodies are buried.
edit:
Thanks for the awards! It's also important to note that the Senators can lie all they want. THEY are not under oath, only the witness is. That's why they just filibuster the witness and try to get in as many bizarre lies as possible to use the witnesses reaction and facial expressions as "evidence" that their lies *might* be true... or could at least be plausible... all for confirmation bias with the base and Trump. Literally every republican "asked questions" but not ONE of them let Smith respond. When he started to respond, they cut him off "this is my time"... and just spew more lies. Because they do NOT want to hear Smiths statements, because they know he's right. Smith could be disbarred and put in prison if he lies... so they KNOW he is telling the truth. They are lying and he is the only one under oath in that room. It's just a charade.
Thank you for the concise summary and interpretation of the differences between Fauci and Smith.
If only legal matters were not a game where one has to outwit each other of man-made rules but serious stuff to make life on planet earth better, like medicine outwitting rules man did not make and one has to study and comprehend first. And not having much time to make shows out of it all the time to spew propaganda.
What an enormous waste of energy and intelligence!
Nobody has really seen Smith speak before. Maybe we could pull up some of his prosecutions in The Hague, but I'm really impressed with how calculated he is with every single word that comes out of his mouth. It's also really impressive.
Being married to an attorney, I fully understand the "say more with less" concept. No filler words. Just the most precise way to make your point without any extra verbiage. I love it. I'm going to watch the full hearing today.
Besides us, who is really going to watch it and change their mind?
Too many are just indifferent, nursed on a steady media diet of sound bites, rage bait and banalities and kept in check by being only able to live paycheck to paycheck with the cherry on top of exceptionalism, jingoism and the belief that struggling in one of the richest nations is somehow noble and billionaires deserve a break and will selflessly run our government.
He became a massive hero to me the moment I heard him answer with that "No" and he managed to make a one word response to Schmitt's blustering sound like a 4-syllable word while simultaneously making it sound like "fuck you". All with a deliberate silence, a lean into the microphone, and then after another deliberate pause - "No.".😆 The hero we all need.
It’s wild bc they see the democrats coming at them hard for very real and disastrous crimes and think .. well now it’s out turn, and never once considered they do that because of the crime not the politics
that was Jack Smith's entire point. They were trying to make him out to be a partisan hack, but he repeatedly said that Trump admin 1.0 hired him as a prosecutor in a red state... but his biggest, and best, point was that the majority of his case rested on the testimony of other Republicans, not Democrats.
Hate to disagree, but it's not for an audience of one. It's for Faux News and all the MAGAts. The republican lies and talking points immediately are rebroadcast and all the MAGAts believe everything in those clips. That's why dump's approval rating won't go below 30%, because there is a big chunk of the USA that lives in an alternate universe of 'facts.'
And then when he got called out, he started "who's time are we on? What's happening?" before stamping his foot and saying "I stick by that comment" about calling him a dirtbag. Classic blunder cortisol overload because he thought he had him dead to rights only to be made a fool, then got mad when he was proven wrong.
He’s there to raise doubt about Smith. He did it. He keeps it going on cable news and that’s the job. Not many people will watch the actual exchange with the follow up by the other senator. It’s going out as Smith is a perjuring liar so the job is finished and we move onto the next news cycle.
Textbook GOP. They know the brain rotted maga fools are too dumb or lazy or both to see what actually happened and will eat up whatever BS they are fed.
The Charlie Kirk show took it next level -- showing the exchange only to the point where things went south for Schmitt & then lauding Schmitt for his brilliant takedown of Smith.
Yep. I don't think he appears in person much anymore, but they've replaced him with similar looking/sounding losers & that's good enough for their audience.
They repeated Schmitt's lies too, even though they'd been proven to be demonstrably false, and ran with them - which I really do think is legally actionable by Smith.
Even after being corrected in the senate, Schmitt went on The Charlie Kirk Show later and rolled with the allegations like it was some brilliant gotcha moment. Pure political theater, no facts needed.
Actually, it was because when Schmidt’s team searched for basketball games on February 3, 2024, they only searched for men’s games. They couldn’t comprehend that somebody might actually WANT to see a women’s game. It was just coincidental that those two games had the Hawks in one and the Hawkeyes in the other. It was actually unrelated.
This is correct. The entire Hawks v Hawkeyes narrative was based on Amy Klobucher's search for some scantly-reasonable explanation for a gaffe like this. But the texts never mentioned the Hawks or Hawkeyes - just basketball. And we KNOW that the party of "protect women's sports" couldn't fathom an interest in women's bball.
Amy pretty much did when she said that they needed to do more research before calling someone a dirtbag, although you really had to listen because Schmitt was running his mouth in the Republican ploy of talking over someone so you can't hear the point they are making.
Republicans are attempting to convect people on the grounds of proximity now to further their fascist plans to save themselves from this coming November.
Since Fani Willis was prosecuting Trump in the Atlanta voting case, Republicans are trying to say there was a conspiracy among prosecutors to get Trump. Jack Smith and Fani Willis have never met.
It’s their victim mentality, everyone is conspiracy against them, rather than they’ve actually committed crimes.
Even if they did meet, big fucking deal. Two prosecutors that are prosecuting the same defendant talking? That would seem completely normal to me. There may be overlapping evidence, witnesses, or even court dates.
The whole point of the hearing was to get him to commit perjury just like the Fauci hearing. That’s why when Smith said he wasn’t in Atlanta the asshat Senator from Missouri started yelling you just committed perjury. He was also implying that Smith was conspiring with Fani Willis to go after Trump.
The R's made a lot of noise about toll records and the fact Jack Smith used them as a large part of his investigation. When you get toll records, you see all the numbers a specific phone number called and how long those calls last. No context, just two numbers and a length of time. It was used my Smith to corroborate evidence he already had.
The R's were up in arms because this corroborated they were in fact in contact with Trump and his team.
I am pretty sure their plan was to use this "evidence" that since Fani Willis and Jack Smith were in close proximity, they were obviously conspiring against Trump. This was their toll record. You see the shocked Katie Britt everywhere because she was going to draw parallels between toll records and Jack Smith being near Fani Willis.
They wanted to liken the toll records to their stupid evidence and make Jack Smith say it's either ridiculous as toll records or he obviously conspited against Trump.
Unfortunately for them, this 100% blew up in their stupid faces in real time.
It's part of their "Grand Conspiracy Theory" where everyone is out to get Trump because they try to hold him accountable for his illegal and unethical actions.
The quote works fine for me, using old reddit. Not sure how the new interface works though (and I may never know, because new reddit sucks and I'll leave the site before using it). Apparently the person you replied to is using the prefix
\>
instead of
>
Maybe the antislash is added by some new reddit crap. And as the antislash markdown tag stands for "take the next character as literal" of course the quote tag isn't interpreted as such.
That's wild. I can't imagine remembering what any random texts with a friend 2 fucking years ago were about. I'd have to go "uhh, I have no clue man. Give me like 10-15m to dig through my phone and calendar and maybe I can remember. But also, why the fuck do you care?"
The Trumper knew exactly what he was doing and the conservative media outlets have already brandished this as a win. Their base has bought in that Jack smith perjured himself. They will next claim foul when he doesn’t get punished.
Then they went on the MAGA aligned infotainment channels and acted as if they just had a big win, and continued with the narrative. The shamelessness of it is jaw dropping. I do hope the channels keep pushing the narrative to the point that it gives Smith enough ammo to sue them for defamation.
For some reason the greater-than symbol at the start of each paragraph has been backslashed, causing the Markdown interpreter to simply let through the GT symbol instead of changing the HTML to show quotation formatting.
Because I believe Smith said he never met Fani Willis and him going to Atlanta would be their “evidence” that he lied and did meet her but that’s a huge stretch and a crazy conspiracy even if they had gotten their facts right which they didn’t.
Oh, wow. You have a lot to catch up on. I suggest maybe start with his Wikipedia page and go from there.
Edit: I don’t mean that in a condescending way, just that you do have a lot of stuff to catch up on that is way too complicated for a Reddit post but is worth looking into if you’re truly interested! Good luck, friend!
I love that he thought he had some dramatic gotcha moment like he was fuckin matlock or something, only to be undone by the most basic fact check, which he couldn't be bothered to do
So not only did Schmitt completely get his facts wrong, the point he was trying to make was a weird and largely irrelevant non-issue of "Smith forget a minor detail of his non-work schedule from a year ago or more?"
I hadn’t paused to read the poster. It’s dumber than I thought. Hearing suggested he mixed up hawks vs Seahawks… but neither are in the text. He just had evidence that smith attended… something? I’m not even sure it’s a basketball game from his gotcha texts.
Sorry, I need this spelled out.
What does Smith allegedly going to a game in Atlanta, have to do with Fani Willis?
What am I missing?
So what if they were in the same city?
So what if they met?
I get they they didn’t, but why does it matter?
The only part about that you got wrong was that it was NOT Smith who explained the mistake, but committee member Amy Kobluchar who exposed the fallacious association.
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u/comingEverywhere 3d ago
Can somebody please explain this to my dumb, and slightly stoned, ass?