Seems to me the problem is with whoever made false statements or accused others of doing things it turns out they did not. If it's a crime to cover up a non-crime it certainly should be a crime to manufacture the same non-crime and cause the taxpayers to waste money persuing something that should never have been persued in the first place.
This is like punishing a child for supposedly knocking over a vase and breaking it but later learning that the vase was never broken. But in the course of finding that out the child doesn't co-operate with the vase "investigation" so the child gets punished anyway.
If Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to federal investigators for a crime she eventually was never convicted of what the hell happened to the people that lied to the same agency the investigators worked for that started the investigation in the first place? Why didn't they go to jail? Somebody lied when they said she committed a crime but it turns out she did not. Isn't that the same thing Martha went to jail for?
If it's good enough for the President, it's good enough for his Cheif of Staff, the Veep's aides, and the Speaker of the House. Clinton, Delay, Rove, Scooter...
"It's not the crime, it's the cover-up." You'd think politicians would learn. But they never do.