“It’s called my hero”: Dave Grohl dedicates song to “new friend” Jack Smith while wearing Hawkeyes t-shirt

Jack Smith was reportedly spotted in the crowd at the Power to the People Festival when the man behind Everlong made a rather notable song dedication on stage. Dave Grohl, who is currently fifty-seven years old, told the crowd

"It's called my hero."

Grohl then dedicated the Foo Fighters classic to

"my new friend Jack."

However, Grohl did stop short of a full name. The Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt he had on wasn't accidental. Senator Eric Schmitt had allegedly attempted to get Smith to perjure himself before Congress just days earlier, and the shirt was widely seen as a pointed nod to that.

As per a report shared by Forbes, Smith, also fifty-seven, was the independent special counsel appointed during the Joe Biden administration to oversee federal investigations into Donald J. Trump, with former Attorney General Merrick Garland making that call to keep accusations of political bias at arm's length. Two separate sets of federal criminal charges against the Republican came out of that work, one allegedly targeting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, another centered on claims he held onto classified documents after leaving the White House and then reportedly worked to block the government's probe into them.

The forty-seventh president pleaded not guilty to all of it, calling the whole thing a

"hoax."

Both cases were dropped after he won back the presidency, the Justice Department citing its longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Smith had already drawn the businessman's fury publicly by then. During his House Judiciary Committee testimony back in January, the forty-seventh president reportedly took to Truth Social mid-hearing and branded Smith a

"deranged animal."

Jack Smith denies attending Atlanta Hawks game as Senator Eric Schmitt raises perjury concerns at Senate hearing:

As per a report shared by The New York Times on Sept. 29, 2026, Senator Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, used part of the four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to question Jack Smith over whether he had attended an Atlanta Hawks home game back in February 2024. Schmitt's line of questioning was focused on the basketball game in the hopes of demonstrating that Jack Smith had perjured himself. It was also part of a broader attempt to suggest Smith had been involved in a conspiracy with local Atlanta prosecutors to allegedly ensnare the forty-seventh president.

Smith appeared deeply confused when the question was put to him.

"I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I'm sure of that," he shared.

That being said, Schmitt seemed confident at the time that he had caught Smith in a lie, presenting the basketball game attendance as what the Times described as smoking-gun evidence against the former special counsel.

The moment was part of a wider pattern throughout the hearing, with Republicans repeatedly accusing Jack Smith of lying during his testimony. The broader effort, as the report noted, was to characterize Smith as politically partisan, a man with an ax to grind not just against a former president but also against the Republican establishment more broadly. Jack Smith had already defended his work before Congress prior to the Senate appearance, and Republican members had previously claimed that his earlier testimony before the House contained perjury.

Senator Schmitt calls Jack Smith a dirtbag before leaving hearing:

As per the same New York Times report, Schmitt argued that Smith had lied once more, this time over a basketball game, suggesting that if the former special counsel had been in Atlanta at all, he may have met with Fani Willis, the local district attorney who also reportedly pursued a criminal case against the forty-seventh president. Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana stood alongside Schmitt during the exchange, helping hold up a poster board that showed text messages among members of Smith's special counsel team from Feb. 3, 2024, which allegedly discussed seats at a basketball game.

Before Smith could respond, Schmitt addressed him directly.

"I don't think you know we have this stuff, so I'll give you a second to process it so you don't perjure yourself," he said.

That being said, the poster board was reportedly taken down almost immediately, too quickly for most people in the room to read it. When Smith maintained he had not attended an Atlanta Hawks game during that period, Schmitt declared,

"I think you've already perjured yourself,"

He then called the former special counsel a

"dirtbag."

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Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, then invited Smith to respond. Jack Smith told the committee he had in fact attended a basketball game that day, but it was the Iowa Hawkeyes playing at the University of Maryland. As per the Times, that night saw Caitlin Clark, the star point guard who now plays in the W.N.B.A., score thirty-eight points and finish with twelve assists.

Klobuchar suggested that Schmitt's accusation was rooted in a confusion between the "Hawks" of Atlanta and the "Hawkeyes" of Iowa. Schmitt declared he still stood by calling Smith a "dirtbag" and then left the hearing.

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