Previously on The Young and the Perjurious…Starring Eric Schmitt Jack Smith Hawks Hawkeyes: A Conspiracy That Tripped Over a Mascot

A senator. A special counsel. A basketball game nobody attended. And a secret so explosive, it could only be unraveled in a Senate hearing room — where truth goes to be waterboarded and dignity goes to die.

Our story opens in Washington, where Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt has spent weeks piecing together a diabolical puzzle. He has text messages. He has suspicions. He has the burning eyes of a man who has just discovered string and a corkboard. The pieces all point to one unthinkable truth: Jack Smith, former special counsel, was in Atlanta in February 2024. At a Hawks game.

Probably plotting. Probably scheming. Probably wearing a villain’s little scarf.
Schmitt leans into the microphone, America holding its breath, and delivers the accusation heard ’round the group chat: Smith lied under oath about being at that game.

Dun dun DUUUN.

Except — plot twist — Jack Smith was not in Atlanta. He was in Maryland. At a University of Maryland women’s basketball game. Watching the Iowa Hawkeyes. With Caitlin Clark. The “Hawks game” was not a Hawks game. It was a Hawkeyes game. Somewhere, a conspiracy theory opened its eyes in a hospital bed, looked in the mirror, and did not recognize its own face.

And this, dear viewer, is where our tale truly begins — because Eric Schmitt Jack Smith Hawks Hawkeyes is not just a hearing. It is a daytime drama in which the scheming senator seduced certainty, married volume, and woke up in bed with a mascot.

Episode One: Hawkeyes, Not Hawks

The structure of the supposed scandal was magnificent in the way a cardboard castle is magnificent if you squint and ignore wind. Senator Schmitt suggested Smith had been at the Hawks-Warriors game in Atlanta in February 2024. The implication hovered in the air like bad cologne: maybe Smith had met Fani Willis; maybe this was the thread; maybe the entire political universe had finally handed Republicans a little gold-plated gotcha.

Then Jack Smith explained he had been at a University of Maryland women’s basketball game watching Iowa play. Caitlin Clark was there. Maryland was there. The Hawkeyes were there. The Atlanta Hawks were not there, had not been there, and were presumably busy being an entirely different bird several states away.

That is the part that gives the story its perfect absurdist geometry: Hawks versus Hawkeyes is not a subtle distinction. It is not “there, their, and they’re” at 2 a.m. It is a professional NBA franchise in Georgia versus a college program from Iowa named after a bird with extra ambition. Georgia and Iowa are not separated by a confusing hallway. They are separated by roughly 650 miles of geography and at least one functioning fact-check.

Our heroine of reason, Senator Amy Klobuchar, arrived on scene like the town doctor who always knows everyone’s blood type. With the weary calm of a woman who has seen this episode before, she pointed out that Iowa’s team is called the Hawkeyes. Not Hawks. Hawkeyes. The camera holds on Schmitt’s face. The organ music swells. Somewhere in the gallery, a single gasp.

Episode Two: Meanwhile, John Kennedy Was Losing His Lunch

And because this soap opera has an ensemble cast, Eric Schmitt was not even the day’s only performance artist. Enter Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, the long-lost brother who shows up at the funeral primarily to make it about himself. Kennedy approached the witness with grave concern, pressed Smith about his wife’s political views and his conversations with Merrick Garland, and then — with the full weight of the United States Senate behind him — delivered a line for the ages: “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Read that again slowly. Let it sit, like regret.

This is a grown man, a United States senator, a former law professor, deploying the verbal equivalent of a middle school cafeteria dare. Jack Smith prosecuted a former president, and Kennedy’s response was to announce a one-man gastrointestinal protest.

Somewhere, Cicero felt a disturbance and reached for Tums. The line was supposed to be devastating. Instead it sounded like a man describing his reaction to airport sushi — which, to be fair, may still be the most honest thing said in that hearing room all day.

And here is the beautiful part: it was the same hearing. Same witness, same afternoon. Schmitt brought a conspiracy theory that died of ornithology, and Kennedy brought a barf threat. This is not a Judiciary Committee; it is a variety show with subpoenas.

The Real Offense Was the Confidence

Let us be fair to human error. Everyone has confidently walked into the wrong room, greeted the wrong person, or referred to a colleague by the name of a pet. I once called a dentist “Captain.” Life is slippery. The problem is not the slip; the problem is building a perjury accusation on top of the slip and then acting betrayed when gravity shows up.

Schmitt did not arrive curious. He arrived certain — loud, accusatory, primed for the clip, the headline, the viral moment where a senator appears to wrestle truth to the ground. This is the modern political reflex: skip verification, maximize theatrical certainty, and let the audience sort out the wreckage later. The old model said, “Trust, but verify.” The new one says, “Post, then maybe squint at a Wikipedia page if the ratio gets ugly.”

And accountability? Adorable concept. In the current ecosystem, admitting “I should have checked before accusing a former special counsel of lying under oath” is treated like weakness, while charging ahead wrong is framed as fighting. It is not fighting. It is opera with talking points.

A Senate Hearing Should Not Feel Like Open-Mic Night at the Wrong Game
There is a serious layer under the slapstick. Accusing someone of perjury is not a cute little rhetorical garnish. It is the kind of claim that can stain reputations, distort public understanding, and turn a hearing room into a content farm.

Senators have staff, researchers, lawyers, calendars, and access to basic human language. The public should be able to assume that before elected officials fire allegations at a witness, someone has at least confirmed whether the bird in question is a Hawk, a Hawkeye, or a very confused pigeon with subpoena envy.

Instead, the country got a live demonstration of how easily certainty outruns evidence. The intended scandal had villains, secret travel, suspicious texts, and a prosecutor allegedly caught in a lie. The actual story had women’s college basketball, Caitlin Clark draining threes in Maryland, a senator discovering on television that mascots matter, and another senator confessing to a mild case of rhetorical food poisoning.

That is why the moment landed so hard. It compressed an entire era into one mistake: performative outrage first, facts optional, apology unlikely, clip inevitable. The conspiracy did not collapse because of a brave investigation. It collapsed because Iowa’s nickname has one more syllable than Atlanta’s.

The Gotcha That Got Got

So here is the tidy moral, folded into a foam finger: Eric Schmitt Jack Smith Hawks Hawkeyes is funny because it is small, and alarming because it is not rare. It is the sound of politics mistaking volume for evidence and confidence for command. One man went to a Caitlin Clark game in Maryland. Another tried to turn that into an Atlanta conspiracy. A third stood up and announced his digestive dissent. And the American public got front-row seats to the United States Senate learning that a Hawk and a Hawkeye are not the same bird — and that “throw up in my mouth” is apparently now a line of constitutional inquiry.

Tune in next week, when someone confuses the Packers with the Broncos and is immediately appointed to a subcommittee.

I would laugh harder if these were not the people trusted with oversight, budgets, courts, war powers, and the occasional basic map.

Peace Out ~ KAH