Martha Stewart’s latest motion for a new trial illuminates how much the federal case against her has turned into a dispute about lying. When the scandal erupted, everyone was talking about insider trading. But it turned out that Stewart did not commit insider trading — or at least the government never charged her with engaging in it on a criminal basis. It did try to bring a securities fraud case against her, but that got thrown out by the federal district judge hearing the case here, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum.

In the end the only charges the government sustained were those that Stewart lied to the government in the course of its investigation and obstructed its investigation. This is a serious matter, one that could bring a sentence of up to 16 months in prison. But the fact that it was about lying to investigators is all the more glaring for the lack of any other criminal wrongdoing by Stewart.

Then it turned out that one of the jurors had failed to give an honest answer during the voir dire. Known as Juror No. 8, he was once arrested for assault on a woman and was held in jail for several days following the assault. He did not disclose that, however, when he was asked during the jury selection process whether he had ever been accused of or charged with a crime. The episode was described in a reprise, by Michael Rips, that appeared in the adjacent columns on April 16.

The discovery of the omission after Stewart’s conviction led the domestic diva to request a new trial. The request was denied by Judge Cedarbaum, who, as the Associated Press put it, ruled that it was not clear that the juror had lied at all — or that lawyers would have kept him off the case had they known about his background. Stewart’s lawyers maintained stoutly that the case had been poisoned.

In the latest turn, the government itself is charging that one of its own witnesses not only lied, but lied under oath. The witness is named Larry Stewart but is not related to Martha Stewart. The government has charged him with lying on the stand when he claimed he took part in ink-testing of a worksheet used by Martha Stewart’s stockbroker. It’s a serious enough matter that the government has charged Larry Stewart with perjury. Not only that, but several other Secret Service officials were reportedly in court, monitoring the Stewart trial, and, according to the defense, were aware of the alleged perjury by their fellow Secret Service agent but did not say anything about it.

No doubt the government is going to try to convince Judge Cedarbaum that the perjury now being laid to the Secret Service agent was not germane to the charge on which Martha Stewart was convicted. But that strikes us at least as being not an easy proposition to make. It may be that if the officers of the United States government who knew the ink specialist was lying had spoken up right on the spot, Martha Stewart’s lawyers (and those for her stockbroker) could have brought his honesty into question before the jury that would need, in deciding Martha Stewart’s fate, to weigh the integrity of the prosecution itself.

July 8 is the date that has been set for sentencing Martha Stewart. It’s always difficult to predict how a judge is going to look at things. But the point that sticks in our mind that none of the predicate crimes of which she was either accused or suspected ever held up. Only the crime of lying to government agents. In that context the failure of Juror No. 8 to tell the truth during the voir dire is ironical. And the fact that perjury charges had to be brought against a member of the Secret Service is astounding. What a tissue of lies. If the Martha Stewart case is supposed to be about the importance of telling the truth, then Judge Cedarbaum can only underline the point by bringing all the parties back for a new trial, no lies allowed.