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Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Ranking Member Dick Durbin, want Chairman Chuck Grassley to do three things: hand over committee records they say were withheld from the minority before former special counsel Jack Smith testified on September 29, 2026; commit to following Senate rules; and apologize to Smith for personal attacks and accusations of perjury made during the hearing. The demands were set out in a letter dated October 7, 2026. As of that date, Democrats said they still had not received the records, and reporting through October 8 documents no apology from Grassley.
What Democrats are asking for
The October 7 letter, signed by the Senate Judiciary Democrats, makes three requests in a single paragraph:
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- Records. The letter asks that Republicans “immediately provide these and all other documents that you have withheld.”
- Rule compliance. Democrats ask the committee to “commit to fully complying with Senate rules in the future.” The letter does not spell out which specific rule it says was broken; it frames the complaint around minority access to records before the hearing.
- An apology. The letter asks Grassley to “apologize to Mr. Smith on behalf of the Committee for the unacceptable personal attacks and false accusations of perjury he faced during this hearing.”
The procedural complaint is Democrats’ position. Their letter says Democratic members and staff did not receive certain committee materials in advance, and that some of those materials were referred to or displayed during questioning. The Republican side has not, in the reporting reviewed, accepted that characterization.
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What the September 29 hearing was about
The hearing was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was titled “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters.” The committee’s Republican-majority release frames it around allegations about Smith’s handling of financial information, investigative tactics, classified materials, and constitutional safeguards. Grassley’s accusations and Smith’s answers are reproduced in that release. They are competing claims, not findings.
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The Associated Press described the four-hour session as a partisan clash. Republicans argued that the Trump prosecutions were politicized. Democrats defended the legal and factual basis of those cases. The two matters at the center of the prosecutions were Trump’s alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The background Democrats put on the record
Durbin’s pre-hearing statement, published by the Democratic minority in September 2026, lays out the legal history from its side. According to that statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith special counsel in November 2022 to investigate the election effort and the classified documents. It says Smith indicted Trump on four counts in the election case and 40 counts in the classified-documents case, and that Smith moved to dismiss both cases after Trump’s 2024 reelection, citing the Justice Department position that a sitting president cannot be federally indicted and prosecuted. These are the Democratic minority’s account of the record, and they are presented here with that attribution.
The records dispute
The Democratic letter identifies two sets of records it says were not shared with minority members before the hearing:
Text messages about a basketball game
The first set is text messages between a counsel in Smith’s office and a U.S. Marshal about Smith’s attendance at a basketball game. The letter says these messages were referred to or shown by Republican senators without Democratic members or staff having seen them in advance.
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Notes from an August 17, 2024 call
The second set is notes from an August 17, 2024 call between Smith and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. The letter says Republicans referred to or displayed these notes without prior notice to the minority. The reporting reviewed does not describe the contents of the notes.
The basketball exchange
The most heated moment concerned Sen. Eric Schmitt’s accusation that Smith lied about attending an Atlanta Hawks game in Georgia on February 3, 2024. The Democratic letter says the text messages do not establish the claimed Georgia connection. KCUR, republishing Missouri Independent reporting dated October 8, 2026, gives Smith’s account: he recalled attending a University of Maryland women’s basketball game against Iowa in Maryland. Sen. Amy Klobuchar pointed out during the hearing that Schmitt had confused the Iowa Hawkeyes with the Atlanta Hawks.
| Point | What is stated, and by whom |
|---|---|
| Republican accusation | Schmitt said Smith lied about attending an Atlanta Hawks game in Georgia on February 3, 2024 (as reported by KCUR and Missouri Independent, October 8, 2026) |
| Smith’s account | Smith recalled attending a University of Maryland women’s basketball game against Iowa in Maryland (hearing exchange, as reported by KCUR and Missouri Independent) |
| Democratic reading of the messages | The text messages, per the Democratic letter, do not establish a Georgia connection |
| Klobuchar’s point | Schmitt had confused the Iowa Hawkeyes with the Atlanta Hawks (reported at the hearing) |
The reporting makes clear that the disagreement is about what the messages show. It does not establish whether the messages were relevant to the broader charges, and the sources reviewed do not describe the messages’ full text.
Competing views of Smith’s investigative methods
Republicans and Democrats are not disputing the same questions. Republicans focused on Smith’s subpoenas and his handling of financial information. In an exchange with Grassley reproduced in the committee release, Smith said: “Yes, we acquired financial information. As I sit here right now, I cannot recite to you every subpoena we issued… I can tell you why we issued subpoenas, and it was to conduct a criminal investigation…” Democrats argued that the questioning was a partisan attack on the prosecutions and that the accusations of perjury went beyond the evidence before the committee.
No independent study or neutral statistic in the reporting reviewed settles either side’s account of the subpoenas or the records.
Responses and where things stand
KCUR reported that Schmitt called Smith a “total dirtbag,” continued to call him a liar and “dirtbag” after the hearing, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Grassley responded on X by saying Smith should apologize over the collection of bank records. A Grassley spokesperson referred reporters to Grassley’s September 29 remarks, which did not include an apology to Smith.
The reporting reviewed, dated through October 8, 2026, does not establish whether the committee has produced the requested records or whether any apology has been made since. Readers should treat the October 7 letter and the October 8 responses as the most recent documented positions.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →- Documented: Democrats’ October 7 demands; Democrats’ statement that the records had not been received as of that date; Grassley’s public call for Smith to apologize; the spokesperson’s referral to the September 29 comments.
- Not documented in the reviewed sources: production of the records; any apology from Grassley or the committee; any response from Schmitt to the letter.
The basic answers to the reader questions are these: Democrats are demanding an apology because they say Smith was personally attacked and accused of perjury during a hearing they describe as conducted with withheld records. Schmitt accused Smith of lying about a basketball game; Smith’s account and Klobuchar’s comment point to an Iowa game in Maryland, and the Democratic letter says the messages do not show a Georgia connection. Grassley has not apologized to Smith, according to the reporting reviewed.
Key sources: the Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic minority’s October 7, 2026 letter; the Senate Judiciary Committee Republican majority’s September 29, 2026 hearing release; Associated Press reporting of September 29, 2026; KCUR, republishing Missouri Independent, October 8, 2026; and the Democratic minority’s September 2026 pre-hearing statement by Durbin.
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