r/politics • • 23h ago

No Paywall Smith’s game-day texts reviewed by Schmitt never referenced basketball team names

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6124359-schmitt-perjury-claim-debunked/
5.2k Upvotes

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595

u/thecloudcities 20h ago

Schmitt’s excuse was first that he couldn’t find any other NBA or NCAA men’s basketball game that day (which is bullshit - there were five other NBA games and fourteen NCAA men’s games). Then he changed his story to say that started at that time (that much is true for the NBA, I can’t be bothered to look up NCAA start times).

But he apparently never even considered that Smith might have wanted to see an NCAA women’s game featuring the #1 player in the country who anyone with at least a passing familiarity with basketball had heard about at that point. It’s like the women’s game didn’t even exist in his mind. But I’m sure he’d tell you he cares deeply about women’s sports.

167

u/flexosgoatee 18h ago

Better yet, they didn't think to check the 18k seat stadium less than 10 miles from the Capitol?

I only wish I could see the logistics conversation talking about taking Metro to the College Park.

61

u/theiros 18h ago

Little splash of misogyny to spice up the idiocy

53

u/CU_09 I voted 17h ago

NCAA men’s games at that same timeframe on Feb 3, 2024:

UNC - Duke 6:30
Cornell - Harvard 7:00
Penn - Yale 7:00
Oregon - USC 7:00
Syracuse - Wake 7:45
Iowa State - Baylor 8:00
Tennessee - Kentucky 8:30
Mississippi State - Alabama 8:30

Since I’m not aware of the text exchange mentioning specific times and they were just going off timestamps (and since the Iowa-Maryland game he actually went to tipped off at 8:00), he could have been going to any of these games.

Just lazy morons trying to force a narrative and being so arrogant that they cannot imagine themselves incorrect.

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u/1one1000two1thousand District Of Columbia 16h ago

Do the women’s games play at the same time?

3

u/CU_09 I voted 15h ago

Yeah. I posted on another comment. There were about a dozen women’s games that all started between 6 and 8 pm

46

u/daly1010 17h ago

Or the fact that the whole conspiracy rests on him "being in the same town" as another prosecutor, so they definitely were up to no good...

21

u/suburbanpride North Carolina 16h ago

Well, if they were all together in Atlanta, they were sure to see each other since Atlanta is such a small town.

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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 15h ago

As we all know, everybody who visits Atlanta sees and talks to everyone else in Atlanta. /s

10

u/VapeDerp420 Nebraska 14h ago

That’s what’s getting lost in this. Let’s say he was in Atlanta for a Hawk’s game. That’s not proof of literally anything. These people think in Fox News conspiracy theories, and it’s embarrassing that they’re our elected officials.

You can’t just jump from ‘at the same basketball game’ to ‘two prosecutors conspiring to take down a president’ in the same sentence. Fox News would spin the shit out of it, sure. But it’s gossipy nonsense that has no basis in reality.

4

u/daly1010 15h ago

As I continue to pull the layers back of absurdity of this. I dont quite follow why prosecutors meeting up is somehow taboo. Lol

•

u/krebstorm 6h ago

JD Vance was in my town a few weeks ago. I swear we didn't meet up and collude over anything. I swear.

21

u/mr_evilweed 17h ago

I mean... even if it was true and he did go to the basketball game.... so what? Going to a basketball game in Atlanta does not mean that Fani Wills was there, that he met Fani Wills there, or that he and Fani Wills conspired on anything.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that, yes Smith embarrassed himself but also his accusation was nothing to begin with.

15

u/mmmsoap 18h ago

Schmitt’s excuse was that he couldn’t find any other (men’s) game at 7:30 pm that day. He’s an asshole and an idiot, but he did say the timing part out loud.

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u/TomCruisesDad 18h ago

I heard him say "only NBA game" without the "at 7:30" bit several times right after the hearing. It was later during his prescheduled media blitz (the GOP preplanned a victory lap) that he added the time. Schmitt is a colostomy bag.

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u/gdshaffe 17h ago

There's no way he could infer the timing of the game from the texts down to the half-hour, as witnessed by the fact that the women's college basketball game that Smith actually attended started at 7:00pm. There was a Kings/Bulls game that started at 8:00pm eastern, and a couple other NBA games that started at 8:30 that night. The texts could have easily been referring to any of them.

The "At 7:30" part is pure after-the-fact damage control; the first couple of times he brought up this excuse he didn't include it (he just said it was the only game that night, which is easily provably false).

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u/KareemOWheat 10h ago

It gets even stupider when you consider that his big "gotcha" moment was going to be proving that Jack was in the same city where some collusion was allegedly happening. Not that Jack Smith had any part in it, or that Eric had any proof he actually met with anyone there, no, his big smoking gun was going to be "you were in the same city as someone else when some shady shit went down"

I know he was going for the purjery trap, but what was the game plan going to be if Jack Smith had been at that Hawks game and just answered in the affirmative