First, it was deeply revealing—of the Missouri senator’s crazed conspiratorial mindset, and of his presumptions about the world. What convinced him in the first place that former special counsel Jack Smith was in cahoots with Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Perhaps it came from some dark fascist corner of the interwebs that you and I don’t even know about, and from there to X to Fox News and so on. Basically the same way people came to believe Haitians eat dogs.
But the second thing Schmitt’s own goal was, besides embarrassing, was ominous. Because it showed how deep down this absurd rabbit hole the Republicans have gone—and the depths to which they’ll descend to try to find something on Smith. This perfervid posturing was on display Tuesday not only from Schmitt, but from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, who you could tell thought he was about to lower the boom on Smith about something having to do with his clandestine relationship with former CIA chief John Brennan. When a confused Smith said he’d never met Brennan, Grassley went all Emily Litella (there’s an old reference for you!) and ended his questioning under the kind of abrupt and petulant silence one might associate with a six-year-old being bluntly informed that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
What might this mean, in practice? Well, for the nonce, it has manifested itself in a lawsuit—filed the day after the hearing debacle—by Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, alleging that Smith’s probe violated the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which protects members of Congress from criminal or civil prosecution for activities they’ve undertaken in the legislative sphere. Prosecuting the case for Blackburn, who’s leaving the Senate and running for governor, is an outfit called the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a kind of right-wing version of the ACLU, conjured to life in 2017 with backing from groups affiliated with the Koch brothers and Leonard Leo (it made its bones fighting Covid-era mask and vaccine mandates).
Smith wasn’t looking for people to arrest; he was looking for witnesses to a coup d’état (like Senator Darline Graham’s late brother, Lindsey, as Smith explained to her Tuesday in yet another planned gotcha moment that flopped). In any case, the clause has generally been understood to protect only legislative activity. Admittedly, the law here isn’t settled, and these days you never know when a case like this might land in the lap of some Federalist Society servant. But there’s a reason federal judges have been in the habit of tossing MAGA suits like this.
Like every good lawyer, Smith learned in law school: Answer the question you were asked, and only the question you were asked. Jordan contends that Smith was engaging in half-truths, and so he issued a criminal referral against Smith to the Justice Department in July. Jamie Raskin counters that “wishing that you had asked different questions while you had the opportunity to examine a witness is not a proper basis for a referral of a witness for criminal prosecution.” Smith’s lawyers said at the time that “the questions and answers preceding and following these exchanges also make clear that the focus of the question was on the toll records subpoenas. Notably, the referral letter does not contest the truthfulness of Mr. Smith’s answers.”
In sum: We should all be steeling ourselves for the day that Blanche files an indictment against Smith. It would be another textbook example of Republicans doing exactly what they accuse the liberal deep state of doing: using the machinery of the government to engage in political witch hunts. There’s no actual evidence that Smith was engaged in any kind of witch hunt. Republicans say his investigations were unprecedented. Well, yes, they were—but that’s because we’ve never had a president who orchestrated a coup against the United States and who carted away boxfuls of classified documents and spent months ignoring polite requests from the FBI to come down to Florida and have a look.
And finally, let’s end by returning to Schmitt. He’s not an idiot. There’s a standard joke about Trump that it’s a good thing he’s so dumb because if he were a smart fascist, he’d be a lot more dangerous. Well, Schmitt, Tuesday aside, is not dumb. He knew exactly what he was saying, for example, when he gave a speech about a year ago to the National Conservatism Conference that was for all intents and purposes a fascist interpretation of American history.
That’s who Schmitt actually is. And crazy ambitious. Tuesday morning—the day of Smith’s testimony—Axios ran with a “scoop” that Schmitt had “grown close to Vice President Vance and is seen as a top prospect” to be Vance’s running mate in 2028. That was almost surely teed up by Schmitt’s staff in anticipation of the nuclear bomb he was going to explode in his Javert’s lap that afternoon. That it blew up in his face because he believes in nutso conspiracies and forgot that women play basketball is a form of cosmic justice. But it doesn’t mean the MAGA version of the deep state is done with Jack Smith.
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