Jonathan Gruber may have thought that his self-abasement before the House Committee on Investigations would extricate him from his difficulties, but he may be in much deeper trouble.  You see, he was under oath.

Peter Suderman of Reason lays out the problem in a post titled "Jonathan Gruber is a Liar. Was He a Liar Under Oath?"

[Gruber] insisted that he did not write any of the health care law himself. "I didn't draft the legislation," he said, later reiterating the claim: "I did not write any part of the Affordable Care Act."

The problem, of course, is all those videos showing him claiming to have written parts of the law.  Under oath, he stated that we has speaking "glibly" and that it was "an effort to seem more important than I was."

Townhall has posted several videos of the occasions on which Gruber spoke “glibly” and made himself out as important.  Now, it is one thing for a professor to give lectures at public forums in which he exaggerates his role in matters, but it is quite another if he goes into his class at his home institution and lies to his students.  That is professional misconduct – academic fraud, to be specific.  And it is enough to get someone fired.

That’s why the most recently uncovered video is so important; it is one in which, during his lecture at MIT, he claims:

What does this bill do? This bill tries to...full disclaimer, I'm going to describe objectively but I helped write it. I'll be objective, I'll try to be objective but full-disclaimer I was involved in writing the legislation so there is some bias involved here.

Gruber is now trapped.  To be sure, getting fired is probably better than going to jail for perjury.  But there may be a paper trail – for instance, meeting notes that are subject to subpoena – that would indicate he was telling the truth to his MIT students.

Gruber’s agony is only beginning.  His financial records relating to the amount of money he received for consulting with the federal, state, and even local governments are now under subpoena.  If the sums reported so far (just under $6 million) turn out to be true, that is a scandal in itself.  We shall see.

But if Gruber misrepresented his role under oath, my sense of the man is that he will crumble under threat of prosecution for perjury.  We are going to have confirmation hearings ahead for the new attorney general, and she will be asked about her policy toward prosecuting witnesses who lie under oath before congressional hearings.