The fact of whether an official "consciously lying to people" is extremely hard to know, because it is a measure of someone's status of mind in the past. The real world is much more complicated than what you could imagine.

Take Obama's: 'If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan' as an example. He repeated this message for many many times: https://www.politifact.com/obama-like-health-care-keep/

How do you objectively decide:

1) Is this statement true?

2) Did he lie about it?

Also, how do you handle "if there is something I should not know, do not tell me"?