Barr Faces Looney Lowey in House Hearing [OPINION]

Twenty-two months, over 2,800 subpoenas and almost 500 people interviewed. After all of that, former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report finds, "No evidence of collaboration or collusion with the Russians by anyone in the Trump Administration or Campaign."

The media has tried to pull their viewers' minds away from that epic fail and redirect to first Jussie Smollett, but that backfired when his charges were dropped and people of all colors got mad at his special treatment. No suppressing fire support out of that fiasco.

Next, the Democrats and the media they control tried to get us all to focus on Trump's healthcare reform plan (yawn).

But give America some credit here. People had many more questions about the Mueller report still. So, the next logical step for the left, or so they think, is to impeach the report, the author (Mueller) and the one in possession with it (Attorney General William Barr).

U.S. Attorney General William Barr sat in front of the House Appropriations Committee. If you watched, you know that we witnessed theatrics for children and dimwits. The questions which were asked were ones they knew the answers to but pretended not to, and pretended Barr's answers were intentionally wrong, misleading, evasive.

It was like watching a sidewalk performer tricking the kids while winking at the parents. Perfectly insulting.

If you are a member of the House of Representatives and have been since 1989 like the Committee Chairman, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-New York), there would be no way you'd pretend to think that just the size of the report (400 pages) implies wrongdoing.

"I want to address a serious matter; your unacceptable handling of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Report. It's been reported that the Report is 300 to 400 pages--and I use the term reported because we have no idea how long it actually is," she told Barr. "All we have is your four-page summary which seems to cherry pick from the report, to draw the most favorable conclusion possible for the president."

That is crazy, folks.

She hasn't seen it, as she confessed. She's suspicious of it because of the length of it and accuses him of cherry-picking from it, to make Trump look as good as possible.

She can't tell you what Barr has allegedly left out. She doesn't believe what he did choose to share but hasn't read a single letter of one word from the title page of this document.

Cuckoo!

As a private detective since 1991, I can tell you that if you bill a client, you need to lay it all out in the report, just how their money was spent. A surveillance report for 24 hours on a worker's compensation claimant who was never seen outside of his home can take 7-11 pages in most formats.

You have the Title page and then, depending on the size and scope of the report, you have a summary findings section. Lowey stated concerns over the length of the report and concerns for the brevity of Barr's four-page summary.

I can assure you all of this: Mueller's summary findings section wasn't much more than four pages, if it was even that long.

When you are handing a bill over to your client, in this case, the Department of Justice of the United States of America and the bill is in the area of $32 million, you better be able to justify every red cent.

Again, over 2,800 subpoenas with almost 500 people interviewed from California to the Ukraine.

As an investigator, I don't envy Mueller's position from the angle that he didn't turn up the evidence that President Obama's CIA Director James Brennan promised was there. The report tells a yet-to-be-told story but the spoiler is out: no collusion between Trump and Russia. Not him, not his family members or anyone in his administration. No one in the campaign, either.

Those 300-400 pages are basically a big, fat invoice in the back of some slightly smaller stack of pages of the individual tasks like interviews, witness statements whose remarks were found to not be helpful if you were hoping for a Trump-Kremlin connection.

And your congressmen and women, as well as your senators, know damn well how these reports are constructed and how astronomically unlikely it would be for AG Bill Barr to commit a felony to protect the president, knowing the far reach of those looking to destroy Trump.

The deception continues.

I did like one development in the hearing, though; Barr has revealed that he is opening a deep dive investigation into the Fusion GPS info that started the whole FBI sting.

"The Office of the Inspector General has a pending investigation of the FISA process in the Russia investigation. I expect that will be complete in probably May or June, I am told," he said. "More generally, I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016"

Finally.

Ken Pittman is the host of The Ken Pittman Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Contact him at ken.pittman@townsquaremedia.com and follow him on Twitter @RadioKenPittman. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.