Today’s assignment: compare and contrast the FBI and the Chicago Police Department.

First question: If you needed a crime solved, honestly, on the level, which cop shop would be more likely to bring the perp to justice – the FBI or the Chicago Police Department?

Notice, I didn’t ask which cops you’d seek out if you wanted to frame somebody, or if you needed to broom a slam dunk case for a crooked Democrat.

Obviously, those are tasks for the FBI — in the case of the former, just ask Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton, in the case of the latter.

But actually getting to the bottom of a real crime — man, did the Chicago police give a lesson Thursday to the Fake But Incompetent FBI.

The CPD held a press conference after the arrest of leftist media darling Jussie Smollett for staging the latest, and now most infamous — hate-crime hoax since Trump’s election.

It was an amazing performance by the Chicago police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, especially when you compare him to the G-men grandees who are ubiquitous in the alt-left media — Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, etc.

I mean, this guy is a real cop — unlike any of the above. And he behaves like an adult, not some dithering teenage girl.

Compare Johnson’s performance on live TV to the insipid media tour this week of Andrew McCabe, fired crooked fed. Remember, McCabe was briefly the director of the FBI, which means he was running the largest law-enforcement agency in the U.S., way bigger than the CPD.

Yet the hapless feds can’t make a pinch on a jaywalker — unless he’s maybe wearing a MAGA hat.

By his own accounts, McCabe and his fellow “lawmen” spent all their time trying to dream up ways to get rid of Donald Trump. Well, at least we know now why the feds never had time to follow up on that tip last year to their hotline that Parkland High School was going to be shot up, or the earlier one from the Russian secret service that a couple of local Muslim terrorists in Boston named Tsarnaev might be bad hombres …

The FBI had other fish to fry. They had to redact all the documents about McCabe’s $70,000 table on the grounds of “national security.” They had to lie in FISA warrant applications that the dodgy dossier was actually “intelligence,” rather than fabricated Clinton campaign smears.

On the other hand, in Chicago Johnson and one of his detectives laid out how they brought down this Smollett, whose case of Trump Derangement Syndrome was no worse than that of any of the FBI brass, or the members of the “intelligence community” like ex-Communist voter John Brennan of the CIA and ex-DNI James Clapper.

All of the above, by the way, including McCabe, have been accused of lying under oath. Which is basically what Smollett is under arrest for — filing a false police report.

Yet Smollett was locked up, and Andrew McCabe was preening in some green room, getting ready for his next close-up. Smollett committed his crime to get a pay raise — he was “only” making $65,000 per episode of his rotten TV show. Eighteen episodes, $65,000 per – he couldn’t make a go of it on $1.2 mil a year. McCabe’s doing the same, chasing the legal tender for his book. What’s the difference?

Supt. Johnson said his cops were “pissed off” when they found out the selfish reason Smollett had them running through hoops for three weeks, chasing phantoms.

Funny, the FBI agents felt the same way when they found out that McCabe had been lying to them for months under oath about one of the many scandal investigations of FBI corruption. It’s right there in the Inspector General’s report.

But again, McCabe is still the toast of the town, and Smollett is just toast. Such are the vagaries of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

At their press conference, the Chicago police laid out the shoe-leather work that cracked the case. Checking out dozens of surveillance cameras, poring over taxi and Uber records, issuing subpoenas for bank records, obtaining search warrants to search apartments. Related Articles Howie Carr: Drug-lab-scandal hacks continue to run rampant

Howie Carr: Joining Joe Biden in mid-babble

Howie Carr: At $184,694, being a Massachusetts judge is good work … if you can get it

Howie Carr: Joe Biden continues to lose notes, mind

Howie Carr: Good thing Shiva isn’t taking his GOP primary loss personally …

You know, cops doing cop things.

And what does Andrew McCabe’s FBI do? They shack up at no-tell motels and write each other texts about how Hillary Clinton should win 100,000,000 to nothing, after which Strzok goes to a Walmart in Tidewater, Va. and texts back to his married girlfriend that he can “smell” the Trump supporters.

If it comes down to the FBI or the CPD, you know whose 911 I’m calling.

Order Howie’s new book, Kennedy Babylon Vol. 2, at howiecarrshow.com.