WASHINGTON ― Republicans have tried and tried to portray former special counsel Jack Smith as a partisan hack in his prosecution of President Donald Trump, and on Tuesday, during a high-profile hearing, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) seemed to think he finally had the goods.

But the attempted slam dunk, which the former state prosecutor boasted amounted to perjury, turned into an embarrassing miss by Schmitt, who had mixed up the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes’ women’s basketball team.

During his questioning, Schmitt asked Smith, “Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 3, 2024?”

The question bewildered Smith, but after a little back-and-forth establishing that the game took place in Atlanta, Smith said he wasn’t there. Schmitt then started to explain the reason for his question: The game occurred the day after former Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, in the middle of her own prosecution against Trump, admitted an affair with Nathan Wade, another prosecutor.

And then Schmitt revealed his hand: “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?”

Smith said nothing. Committee Democrats protested that Schmitt hadn’t given Smith a chance to see the texts, which Schmitt’s staff had displayed on a poster.

“We’ll put it in a follow-up. You can respond. I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” Schmitt said.

In other words, Schmitt, who has been discussed as a potential vice presidential candidate on the 2028 Republican ticket, believed he’d caught Smith not only colluding with a district attorney, but also lying under oath, meaning the Trump administration could finally send him to prison. (House Republicans have already made a dubious perjury accusation against Smith from his House testimony last year.)

“You have weaponized the Department of Justice against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country,” Schmitt said in closing. “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”

But a minute later, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Republicans to let Smith see the poster again, and it jogged Smith’s memory. (The texts showed a discussion about an arena seat reservation for Smith.)

“I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing right around that time,” Smith said. “It was Maryland playing Iowa.”

Klobuchar surmised that Schmitt had apparently misunderstood the texts ― that they reflected Smith and his team attending an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland, not a Hawks game in Atlanta.

“That might be the confusion over the names of the team,” Klobuchar said with a small smile. “But perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.”

Schmitt seemed furious. “I presented him with text messages about him wanting to meet with people that could have obviously been related to the prosecution that was coordinating with his office in Atlanta,” he said.

Klobuchar told Schmitt he should have had his facts straight before launching into his “dirtbag” tirade.

“You had the teams wrong, sir,” she said.

After the hearing, Schmitt insisted he’d gotten nothing wrong, but he seemed less sure Smith had committed perjury.

“I don’t know if Jack Smith’s lying or not. It was the only game ― Atlanta was the only NBA game or men’s college basketball game that night at 7:30,” Schmitt told HuffPost.

Reminded that Smith said he was at a women’s college basketball game in Maryland, Schmitt said the text messages he obtained ― which his office has not made public ― related to Smith being at a basketball game that night. According to ESPN, the Hawkeyes game against Maryland started at 8 p.m. and Caitlin Clark scored 38 points.

“I asked him if he was in Atlanta. He said he was not in Atlanta. Jack Smith has lied before,” Schmitt said.

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