To begin with, the very nature of service, signifies that the person so serving, is actually serving the person or the public in a manner in which they are truthful, diligent, and competent; for anything less than that, is a form of service but not really good service. Those that are our public servants are meant to serve the public in a manner in which their actions are always aboveboard and for the greater good; for if not that, then their service is at best conflicted, and at worse, corrupt.
When a given individual lies, or is deceitful, such can be subject to civil or criminal penalties, depending upon the circumstances and what has occurred. For instance, being deceitful in order to procure governmental aid is considered to be a crime, and lying such as in committing perjury, is also a crime. People are put in jail all of the time for essentially lying or being deceitful; in addition, lying or being deceitful can often mean the loss of one’s employment. So, for an absolute certainty those in the general public that lie duly suffer the penalties, thereof.
On the other hand, there are our public servants, of which, by virtue of the public lacking full transparency and disclosure of the deals, communications, and negotiations so done, perhaps unwittingly permits the opening of deliberate misdirection and deceit by those public servants; in which when that general public is lacking in the ability or the means for robust investigation by independent sources as to what is really going on, thereby places those in the general public in a position in which they have to trust that their public servants are actually performing their duties in a conscientious and fair manner, but not actually knowing whether or not this is true. Further to the point, when public servants are seemingly permitted to deceive the public through their lack of full disclosure, including personal conflicts, or by their distortion of real events, to conform, for instance, with the narrative that those in high positions impress upon them to follow, this all serves to obfuscate what is actually occurring -- creating thereof that pathway of lies and deceits by those public servants which are subsequently sold as being true, when they actually are not.
Additionally, there should never be a construct in which those on the outside, such as the general public, have to duly suffer for their crimes, lies, and deceits; whereas, more times than not, those that are public servants, are typically never held accountable for the same, and almost never personally held to suffer for their crimes, which often are far more damaging to the public and the country that they are supposed to serve, than the acts of just one individual person.
When public servants are seemingly permitted carte blanche to do whatever that they feel is necessary or advantageous for the agenda that actuates them, of which by doing so they do not disclose their conflicts of interest, or their deceptions, and of which these public servants also have an implied immunity from those that would have the ability to prosecute them, then the general public has been betrayed by those that been placed in that responsible position to represent them.
The argument could be made and should be made, that those public servants that betray the public interests for their own selfish or self-serving interests, or in obedience to that unelected power that unduly influences them, that they should be held accountable for their damage to their country and their fellow countrymen -- which is a far more insidious bad act, by virtue of their misapplication of vested authority.