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I spent a good chunk of last week in lovely Charleston, South Carolina, where I spoke at the annual retreat of a large corporate legal department. Of the various activities I engage in as part of my gig work portfolio career, speaking is my favorite: I get to relive my glory days competing in extemporaneous speaking in high school, while getting paid for the privilege.
I often try to provide some “news you can use” at the beginning of Judicial Notice. I recently recommended keeping both Uber and Lyft on your phone and checking both when looking for a ride, since the two can differ more than you might expect in both cost and speed of pickup. As it turns out, there’s an app for that: Hackney, which lets you compare the rates of different rideshare companies in a single app.
Hackney includes services besides Uber and Lyft, such as Empower—which is, in my experience, consistently cheaper than its rivals. Why? It charges drivers a flat subscription fee, instead of taking a cut of each ride, then lets drivers set their own rates—and in setting their rates, drivers on Empower generally ask for less than what Uber or Lyft would require them to charge, effectively sharing their savings with riders. You can learn more about Empower and sign up here (and feel free to enter my promo code—7EASW1—which gives both of us $10 in free rides). Thanks to the readers who brought both Hackney and Empower to my attention.
Now, on to the news. As I did with last week’s Judicial Notice, I’m continuing my experiment with a new format: this initial post features only the “winners” in each category. I’ll follow it with a supplemental post containing additional material that I couldn’t fit into Judicial Notice proper.
Lawyer of the Week: Eric Schmitt.One year ago, in October 2025, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded testimony from former special counsel Jack Smith about his prosecutions of Donald Trump. Republicans wanted Smith to testify privately, and last December, he sat for a closed-door deposition. But his lawyers, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski of Covington & Burling, pushed for their client to be allowed to testify publicly, so the American people could hear from him directly. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed, and last Tuesday, Smith testified before the SJC.
For substantive highlights from Smith’s testimony—in which he declared that he would still prosecute a former president today based on the same evidence, “regardless of whether the president was a Republican or a Democrat”—see The Washington Post. But hardly anyone will remember what Smith said at the hearing.
Instead, a different lawyer emerged as the breakout star of the proceedings: Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). A graduate of the Saint Louis University School of Law and former attorney general of the Show-Me State, Schmitt took on a prosecutorial demeanor and started intensely interrogating Smith about whether he had attended a basketball game pitting the Golden State Warriors against the Atlanta Hawks—a home game for the Hawks, so played in Atlanta—on February 3, 2024.
What was Schmitt going for here? Later in the hearing, it became apparent that he was trying to suggest that Smith, while special counsel, had pursued a vendetta against Trump in cahoots with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who had brought her own charges against Trump in Georgia—and that Smith had traveled to Atlanta to meet with Willis.
But Schmitt didn’t make any of this explicit at the start, instead launching straight into questions about a basketball game on February 3, 2024. Not understanding where Schmitt was going, a very confused Smith denied having been in Atlanta or attending a Hawks game. Schmitt kept pressing, as reflected in the transcript:
SCHMITT: Is it your testimony that you were not in Atlanta on February 3rd, 2024? Let me just give you a little context…. The day before, Fani Willis came clean with her affair with [fellow] prosecutor [Nathan Wade]. You know the Atlanta prosecutor that was also trying to get Trump? The next day were you in Atlanta?
SMITH: I do not believe so….
SCHMITT: Okay. Did you ever meet Nathan Wade or Fani Willis in your time as special counsel?
SMITH: No.
SCHMITT: 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 February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair? I don’t think you know that we have this stuff.
Based on Smith’s refusal to admit being in Atlanta, Schmitt told him, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself”—and added, “You will go down as a total dirtbag.”
As it turned out, Schmitt did have texts about a basketball game that Smith attended on February 3, 2024—just not the Warriors-Hawks game. Instead, as Smith explained, he attended a college basketball game featuring Caitlin Clark, in which Maryland hosted Iowa.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), another former prosecutor, immediately offered her theory of what had happened: Schmitt and his staffers had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Oops.
If you’re thinking that this sounds like a total disaster for Schmitt, you’re right—and as is often the case with viral videos, written accounts don’t do it justice. Instead, take five minutes out of your day to treat yo’ self by watching the footage.
As you might expect, social media had a field day at Eric Schmitt’s expense. On X, users started coming up with memes involving Schmitt confusing Jack Smith with everyone from actor Will Smith to explorer John Smith.
Online commenters also enjoyed the look of abject horror that crossed the face of Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.), shown in the image at the top of this post—an image Joe Patrice described as worthy of hanging in the Louvre. As a lawyer by training and a former Capitol Hill staffer, Britt was especially well-situated to understand how humiliating this all was. Her extreme expression—originally captured by a brilliant cameraman from MS NOW, who zoomed in slowly on Britt as she realized the debacle unfolding before her eyes—quickly became the subject of many memes (including one posted by her husband, Wesley Britt).
For his part, Schmitt was unapologetic. In post-hearing interviews, he defended his line of questioning: “We had information, of course, about [Smith] being at a basketball game…. My job is to ask the questions, and his job is to answer the questions”—and answer them Smith did, even if Schmitt didn’t love the responses.
As of now, it appears that no heads have rolled in Schmitt’s office. One staffer, Schmitt’s chief counsel Ethan Harper, was supposed to start a new job in the White House Staff Secretary’s office next week—but whether that move will still happen is unclear, as reported by Sophia Cai of Politico. If I hear more about Harper’s fate, I’ll update this post. According to Cai, “there is no evidence Harper was responsible for the gaffe” (and Schmitt’s office hasn’t assigned blame to anyone in particular).
Judge of the Week: Justice Samuel Alito.Tomorrow is the first Monday of October, and Supreme Court aficionados all know what that means: the start of October Term 2026. The first case the Court will hear will be Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns whether federal law precludes state-law claims against fossil-fuel companies for injuries allegedly caused by climate change.
When the justices take the bench at One First Street tomorrow morning, one chair will be empty for the Suncor argument: that of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Why? As the Court announced last Monday, Justice Alito “has determined that he will not continue to participate in this case.” The original notification to counsel didn’t explain his reason for recusing. But in an interview on Wednesday with Greg Stohr of Bloomberg, Justice Alito explained that while his recusal wasn’t mandatory, he felt it was “the prudent step,” in light of the fact that his wife owns stock in two energy companies, ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, that could be affected by the Court’s ruling.
Justice Alito also gave interviews to Jan Crawford of CBS News and Shannon Bream of Fox News, in which he spoke more generally about his tenure on the Court. The full interviews haven’t been posted yet, but excerpts are available on the CBS website and X feed, as well as the Fox News website. [UPDATE (11:30 p.m.): Crawford’s extended interview of Alito is now up on the CBS website.]
Some highlights:
Consistent with the retirement speculation during October Term 2025, Justice Alito considered stepping down at the end of OT 2025—but decided to stay for at least one more Term, after concluding that he could still make “a valuable contribution” to the work of the Court.
The justice said that retirement is “something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every Term.” (Justice Alito is 76, making him the second-oldest justice behind Justice Clarence Thomas, 78.)
When asked by Crawford to name a case that required courage, Justice Alito cited Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade. He said that he faced physical threats, experienced harassment, and lost friends as a result of Dobbs.
When asked by Bream about the identity of the leaker who released a draft of his Dobbs opinion before its official issuance, Justice Alito said he does have an opinion, “but the evidence available at this time is not strong enough for the Court or for me to say this is the person who was responsible.”
And wait, there’s more. Justice Alito wrote an interesting essay for The Wall Street Journal, “Even Originalists Make Mistakes,” outlining a half-dozen analytical errors that can be committed by originalist judges. As noted by Howard Bashman of How Appealing, the piece is adapted from Justice Alito’s forthcoming book, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, whose official publication date is this coming Tuesday.
Because he’s in book-promotion mode, Justice Alito appears to be more open to interview requests—and through a publicist at his publisher, Basic Liberty, I have invited him to join me on the Original Jurisdiction podcast. If you’re connected with Justice Alito (and I know some of his former clerks are among my readers), please feel free to put in a good word for me with the justice. We have a number of things in common—New Jersey, Yale Law School, the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office—and I believe we’d have a fun and lively conversation.
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