WASHINGTON ― Within hours of Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) accusing former special counsel Jack Smith of attending an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024, and Smith saying he was actually at an Iowa Hawkeyes game that day, video emerged of someone resembling Smith at the Hawkeyes game.

The progressive media group MeidasTouch zoomed in on a bearded fan in a clip from the game, and a Missouri-based reporter spotted the same Smith lookalike in his own review of the broadcast.

A spokesperson for Smith confirmed to HuffPost on Wednesday that the images show Smith at the game.

Smith immediately said he’d never attended a Hawks game after Schmitt accused him of being in Georgia that day as some sort of conspiracy to coordinate criminal cases against Donald Trump with Fulton County prosecutors. Schmitt inferred Smith’s attendance at the Hawks game from text messages he obtained and even accused Smith of lying under oath.

Minutes later, Smith offered an alibi ― he’d been at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland to see rising star Caitlin Clark, now in the WNBA, playing against the Maryland Terrapins in a women’s college basketball game. Online sleuths noted the seats mentioned in the texts Schmitt showed in the hearing matched Smith’s position at the Hawkeyes game, and that the arena in Georgia, where the Hawks play, doesn’t have the sort of numbered rows indicated in the texts.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) suggested Schmitt had mixed up the Hawks and the Hawkeyes, but Schmitt insisted he’d made no mistake.

“Jack Smith has lied before,” Schmitt told HuffPost after the hearing.

Based on the images from the game and confirmation from Smith’s team, it appears Smith was not lying and that Schmitt did, in fact, falsely accuse a longtime federal prosecutor of perjury in a congressional hearing.

A spokesperson for Schmitt did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Wednesday.

Though he refused to admit his error, Schmitt tried to laugh it off on Tuesday evening with a social media post that asked: “Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?”

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