The aide tasked with holding up botched evidence for MAGA Sen. Eric Schmitt may have lost a major new job after his role in the humiliating episode.
Ethan Harper, Schmitt’s general counsel, was responsible for displaying a poster that was used falsely accuse Jack Smith of colluding with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis during a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
The poster included screenshots of text messages that were taken to mean that Smith attended an Atlanta Hawks game in Atlanta in February 2024. He had actually gone to a women’s basketball game that night featuring the Iowa Hawkeyes, not the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, as Schmitt clearly thought.
Harper, who graduated from Harvard Law School, was expected to leave his role with Schmitt on Friday for a new position in the White House Staff Secretary’s office next week, sources told Politico’s West Wing Playbook on Wednesday.
However, that move is now in doubt after the Senate hearing, three people familiar with the plans said, speaking to Politico on condition of anonymity.
Harper’s promotion to the White House was locked in before the Senate hearing, two sources told Politico. The report notes there is no evidence he was responsible for his boss’s botched gotcha moment.
Harper’s earmarked role at the White House would have reportedly involved him managing the flow of documents to President Donald Trump, 80.
The Daily Beast contacted the White House and Schmitt’s office for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
Politico reported that Harper’s Republican CV includes previous stints with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and D. John Sauer when he was Missouri’s solicitor general.
Fallout from the Senate hearing included Schmitt’s colleague Katie Britt watching on in horror as the gotcha moment fell flat.
MS NOW’s cameras caught her mouth agape and eyes wide in disbelief as the incident played out.
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume also weighed in on the debacle.
“He brought this on himself and deserves the obloquy,” Hume, 83, wrote on X.
TMZ D.C. reporter Charlie Cotton confronted Schmitt about “getting it wrong” during the hearing by mixing up the Hawks with the Hawkeyes.
Schmitt insisted it was “not a mistake,” adding, “He’s lied before, so I guess we’ll take him at his word that he wasn’t in Atlanta? I don’t know.”
Videos have since shown that Smith was sitting in the front row of the Hawkeyes game against the Maryland Terrapins in February 2024.
