Editor’s Note: Paul Callan is a CNN legal analyst, a former New York homicide prosecutor and of counsel to the New York law firm of Edelman & Edelman PC, focusing on wrongful conviction and civil rights cases. Follow him on Twitter @paulcallan. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN  — 

“Snitty” fairly describes the tone of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats during their Wednesday interrogation of Attorney General William Barr over the Mueller report. “General Barr,” as some of his questioners called him, did indeed betray his upper-crust roots when he commented that the letter of complaint special counsel Robert Mueller sent him on March 27 was “a bit snitty.” Snitty is the sort of mannered usage not often tossed off in the halls of Congress these days, and as a result, the AG came in for some ridicule in the press and among late-night comedians.

Paul Callan

Given the desire of many Democratic Senators to parade their “woke” credentials, they might have preferred Barr use “hurtful” and “insensitive” to describe the letter he said was likely drafted by “one of (Mueller’s) staff people.”

(Even Merriam-Webster’s Twitter team swiftly jumped into the fray: “to be ‘snitty’ is to be disagreeably ill-tempered. Got it?”)

Yes, Barr does get it and felt no need to express it with political correctness. In fact, he was unflappable, holding his own during five contentious hours of grilling. Some of the insulting language hurled at him by the Senate Democrats in opposition to all things Trump might have amounted to actionable slander if used outside of the immunity-draped halls of Congress.

A particularly brutal example was the almost incomprehensible verbal assault directed at Barr by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. “Mr. Barr, now the American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office,” she said.

Eventually committee chair Lindsey Graham cut off her tirade, saying: “You slandered this man from top to bottom, so if you want more of this, you’re not going to get it. If you want to ask him questions, you can.”

Many who watched the whole spectacle might agree that it – and not just the Mueller letter – was “ill-tempered.” In the end, the dispute about whether or not Barr fairly characterized Mueller’s 400-plus-page report in his initial two-page summary to the public is almost completely irrelevant. And “snitty” might well be a fair description of the Mueller letter of complaint.

Consider how absurd was the attack on Barr from the get-go: under the express wording of the Special Counsel Statute 28CFR 600.1, Barr didn’t have to release anything. The report came to him as a “confidential” document and could have remained confidential under Barr’s sole discretion as attorney general.

Instead Barr rightly determined that releasing as much of the report as legally permissible was in the public interest. But he faced a serious problem. US law restricts disclosure of grand jury material as well as classified intelligence material. A maze of other Department of Justice regulations and policies restrict publication of many other categories of information that could affect pending investigations. And additional restrictive policies exist to protect the reputations of individuals not charged with criminal wrongdoing.

The report as delivered to Barr did not highlight all the necessary redactions. This left his office with the enormous task of vetting its contents to ensure that the released copy complied with existing law and Justice Department policies.

Because of the enormous public interest in the report, Barr chose to quickly issue a brief summation with his view of the “principal conclusions” outlined in the report, while the redaction process continued. Barr emphasized that this document was never intended to be a “summary” of the entire report. And note that Barr did indeed release the entire report, lightly redacted, shortly thereafter.

And so, many of the unrelentingly partisan attacks lobbed at him Wednesday were mainly a waste of time: Barr’s initial observations, which rankled Democrats so, are made largely irrelevant now that whole report is out. Congress can review it and members can form their own conclusions. They can even question Mueller, as Barr has stated he would have no objection.

Barr even offered Democrats a less redacted copy of the document, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected the offer.

In the end, only Congress can impeach. The attorney general can’t. Barr appears to believe that the President’s actions were lawful, and so he violates no Constitutional duty describing them as such. It is hardly surprising that the attorney general would support the Republican President who appointed him.

Congress now has the entire (redacted) report and removal of the President – should they choose to pursue it – is up to them, not Barr.

Lawyers argue on the fine points and the interpretation of statutory language all the time. Barr did not deserve Mueller’s snit nor any of the snitty abuse heaped on him for doing his job. His interpretations were a defensible analysis of a report that was poorly written and contained a number of confusing and vague observations on the question of obstruction.

Mueller owed the public a firm opinion as to whether Trump’s actions, if engaged in by a civilian, would constitute criminal obstruction. If the answer to that question was yes, then it would be the job of Congress to impeach, convict and render Mr. Trump a civilian subject to a real criminal prosecution.

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    Despite the Senators’ headline-grabbing rhetoric, Attorney General Barr deserved great credit for standing up to a room full of bullies who now think defeating the President means mimicking his worst qualities.

    This piece has been modified from an earlier version to clarify several points.