Were you a federal, state, or local cop? Lying to a federal officer is a felony. Lying to a local cop can be less of a problem, but the feds can even make that a big deal if the entity being lied to receives federal funding.
Lying is an act of speech and the government is prohibited from abridging that right according to the first amendment. We all know how that goes. Graduates of Yale, Harvard, et al. are appointed to SCOTUS over the course of generations. They parse plain language to mean whatever suits them and, well, here we are.