Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) at a Senate Judiciary Committee’s nomination hearing for the Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement on February 25, 2026.

SEN. ERIC SCHMITT (R-MO): I have to say I am struck by the degree of the cognitive dissonance that I hear on the other side. It really is. I mean, I’m used to sort of the political debates and arguing in court and all those sorts of things. But to hear the other side of the dais talk about weaponization is truly shocking given what we know now. And I thought what I might do is just tell a story. And these are 100% facts. Hillary Clinton, concerned about her email scandal, works with a Soros organization to cook up this Russiagate nonsense. They feed it to the intelligence agencies. And they spy under Barack Obama’s presidency, they spy on the political opponent, the Republican, running against Hillary Clinton. He gets elected. They continue the operation. And they launder this intelligence into stuff that was meant to, by the FBI and the CIA, to sideline a presidency of a duly elected president of the United States of America. To sideline him. And that continued. You heard even some people on this committee further that nonsense for four years. And then the FBI is involved with pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story because they didn’t want him to get elected again. So they pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story. The American people should have been allowed to make their own judgments from that. They weren’t. Because the FBI called it a Russian hack and leak operation. They were meeting with social media companies every month and every week telling them that the laptop that they knew, that they had verified in November of 2019, they knew was real and it was his, said it was Russian disinformation. We’ve heard that before. And then, after Joe Biden comes in, three days in they start a censorship campaign against the country, anybody who’s a conservative. And now we also know that the FBI was weaponized in this Arctic Frost investigation that tapped the phones of sitting U.S. senators and also the Republican Attorneys General Association. So let’s pull in two more U.S. senators, Ashley Moody and myself, who were on the executive committee at that time, Charlie Kirk, political organizations, they didn’t agree with. This is not in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This is in the United States of America in the last few years. And then, when they thought President Trump was on the run and there’s no way people would elect him and he announces he’s running for president, three days later, Jack Smith’s appointed to get Trump. Fani Willis brings charges against President Trump and the assistant prosecutor meets with the White House Counsel’s Office. Why would that happen? Then you have Alvin Bragg bring his charges. The number three person at DOJ goes to work for him to get Trump. This continued and Senator Hawley asked the question, wrote it down, what is happening in this country? And I hope that MSNBC is still broadcasting this because I’m sure their viewership hasn’t heard this story that’s gone on for 10 years. The truth is they never forgave President Trump for coming down the escalator at all. They didn’t like him. They didn’t like the disruption. And they’ve spent the better part of a decade not just going after him, but demonizing half the country as fascists and Nazis and threats to democracy. And they have fueled this division in their inability to accept the fact that half of the country isn’t deplorables as Hillary Clinton called her, bitter clingers, as Barack Obama called them, or trash as Joe Biden called them. That they rose up and they sat in their own jury box and they saw all this stuff play out over a decade and they rejected it. And now you have come in to clean that up and you are doing a great job in doing that. And let me make this clear. There is a big difference between what happened under the Biden regime and the weaponization and then holding those people accountable. That is not weaponization. If that doesn’t happen, this will happen all over again. So your job, as you talked about in your confirmation hearing, is so important that this never happens again. And holding people accountable who are part of this conspiracy is absolutely your job. And I’m also taking, you don’t have to comment on this, your unwillingness to answer questions that have come up. I am led to believe, as a former attorney general, that that might mean there’s an ongoing investigation. You don’t have to talk about it. The statute of limitations may have run on some of this stuff, but not on a conspiracy. And if you’re a co-conspirator in mile marker one, even if you want to get on the exit ramp in mile marker five, you are liable for the conspiracy in mile marker 10. And we are at mile marker 10. And I’ll also say what’s happening in this country. What’s happening with the assault on ICE officers is truly shocking. Deportations are nothing new. Bill Clinton deported 12 million people. 12 million people. You didn’t see this. The radicalization that’s happened on the left that plays out with political violence is real. And by the way, let me also point out that if we had a scenario where John Thune was on the Supreme Court steps saying you’ve reaped a whirlwind Supreme Court justices, and then a right wing assassin tried to kill Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and then a Republican appointed judge only gave that person eight years, there will be riots on the streets. Cities would be burning right now.

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