Of course he has. Why would he risk political capital by defending sama publicly if he didn’t know for sure he wouldn’t get burned by defending him?

Maybe because it's not risking very much political capital. If he's wrong, and shuts up (rather than doubling down on it), nobody will remember what he said in two weeks.

Hell, some prominent tech people are often loudly wrong, and loudly double down on their wrong-ness, and still end up losing very little of their political capital in the long run.

Or maybe he's right. We don't know, we're all just reading tea leaves.

Schmidt knows nearly everyone. He will know the details.

If he didn't know he wouldn't say anything. Why risk saying something when there's a very high chance that it's something like sexual misconduct or fraud.