Crikey! This Karen Read expert full of malarkey

Can we stipulate that Hank Brennan has put some really terrible witnesses on the stand during his below-average career as a trial lawyer?

But who could imagine that he would ever have a more wretched witness than Robert Fitzpatrick, a drunk FBI agent Brennan recruited for serial killer Whitey Bulger’s federal trial in 2013.

Fitzpatrick huffed and puffed about his incredible career as a G-man. It was such an astonishing display of Bidenesque malarkey that within 10 minutes of staggering out of the courthouse towards the Barking Crab for a triple gin buck (hold the buck), Fitzpatrick was indicted for perjury.

He later pleaded guilty to six felonies.

On Tuesday, though, Brennan produced an even worse witness than good old fibbin’ fed Fitzie.

Meet Ian Whiffin, a sinister foreign national who is now a cell phone “expert.”

He was hired by DA Meatball Morrissey to try to explain away the McAlberts’ smoking-gun Google search at 2:27 a.m. – “Hos long to die in cold.”

If real, that 2:27 search proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Karen Read didn’t kill her boyfriend John O’Keefe. So the Meatball Mafia had to get an “expert” to tell the jury to pay no attention to the facts.

To give an idea of Whiffin’s expertise, let’s go to the audiotape. He put the smoking-gun cell phone in a freezer to test what the temperature would go down to. It was all very scientific, you understand.

Defense attorney Robert Alessi asked Whiffin, “What was the temperature of the freezer?”

Whiffin: “It was freezing!”

Alessi: “What is freezing in Fahrenheit?”

Whiffin: “Don’t know.”

Alessi: “Do you agree that 32 degrees is the freezing point in Fahrenheit?

Whiffin: “I honestly wouldn’t know.”

Remember Trooper Joseph Paul, a State Police cone head from the first trial. He testified about how “the crime scene spoke to me.”

Paul was a bad, bad witness, even by State Police G.E.D. standards. But Ian Whiffin put Trooper Paul in the outhouse.

Speaking of which, has anyone ever seen Whiffin and Paul together in the same room?

But Whiffin is an expert, don’t you know. He used to be a police officer in some foreign land, although if you live in Norfolk County, you’d never know he was a cop.

He’s not a cone head.

But like all the prosecution’s witnesses in Dedham, especially cops, his memory is a little… vague.

Alessi: “Do you recall the specific slide that discussed a trigger?”

Whiff: “Very vaguely.”

Alessi: “Are you familiar with a firm called Aperture?”

Whiffin: “I’m vaguely aware of them.”

As I told you, he was conducting experiments to see how temperatures affect a cell phone. On the night in question, when John O’Keefe died, there was a snowstorm in Canton. The cell phone was supposedly (at least according to the prosecution) in the snow.

Alessi: “Do you know what the temperature was in Canton that night?”

Whiffin: “I do not, no.”

Alessi: “Don’t you think that would be important in determining what happened with the phone?”

Whiffin: “I didn’t think so, no.”

The difference between Hank Brennan’s two worst witnesses, Ian Whiffin and Robert Fitzpatrick, is that Fitzpatrick just flat out got up there in federal court and lied.

Whiffin just kind of tried to dazzle ‘em with the old BS. Or, as he put it, “I take a holistic view of the data.”

A holistic view of the data. He works for a company that analyzes cell phone data. They mostly work for cops. In this case, the cops wanted to make sure that the evidence pointing away from their favored patsy, Karen Read, would go away.

Mission accomplished!

On the records that used to say “2:27.40 Hos long to die in cold” the “expert” now has a new notation:

“Deleted.”

Then he elaborated: “It’s a deleted record, yes.”

It’s a holistic view of the data.

If I ever get jammed up, and my cell phone records provide incontrovertible evidence that I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to get away with committing a crime, I’m just handing over my cell phone to Ian Whiffin, expert from across the pond.

“Just do the right thing, guv’nor,” I’ll tell him, “and you’ll be taken care of. Do you get me drift, mate?”

With “experts” like Ian Whiffin, that works until they start getting asked tough questions. The tougher the cross-examination from Robert Alessi, the more Whiffin affected the Brit-speak. He didn’t throw in any “blimeys” or “Your Lordships,” but it was definitely not upper crust.

Here are some more of his responses:

“Maybe.”

“I do not recall.”

All this blood on the courtroom floor, and Jen “Toothy” McCabe is still on direct, i.e., kissy-face examination.

I can’t wait until Alan Jackson gets ahold of her and starts asking her the questions from “A Few Good Men.”

“Ms. McCabe,” he will ask, “you can’t handle the tooth, er truth!”

I remember when Robert Fitzpatrick, the crooked FBI agent, was being demolished on the witness stand in Whitey Bulger’s trial. As he was being asked about the lies in the silly book – and lying about them, under oath – Hank Brennan was sitting at the defense table.

He was madly thumbing through Fitzpatrick’s book, “Betrayal,” trying to catch up with reading he should have done before he put him on the stand.

Same thing with Whiffin. Brennan heard that English accent and thought, “Hey, dis guy must be smart.” Remember, Brennan thinks the word “supposedly” is “supposably.”

He’s not Mensa, but in Canton, it helps your social standing to have a two-digit IQ. Around the Waterfall, they call Hank Brennan “the Per-fessor.”

Jen McCabe, you’re next!