I just read the indictment of Christopher Collins, a congressman, for relaying insider information on a company with publicly traded stock, and for "lying" to a federal agent, ie for denying he relayed the information. So, in other words, to deny commission of a crime is a "lie" apparently if the agent thinks you committed the crime.

In any case, what surprised me was that the indictment had no evidence in it. There were no affidavits by first party witnesses and the physical evidence, emails and text messages, were completely unprovenanced and obviously edited and not in any kind of original form as they would come from a telephone company. Moreover, the apparent witnesses to the crime were only referred to by codes such as "CC-3" and there were no affidavits by any of these people, either signed or anonymous. The indictment was essentially 30 pages of innuendo and empty allegations unsupported by any concrete evidence.

So, maybe I misunderstand the idea of an indictment. I thought that to bring someone to trial, the indictment had to include evidence, not just charges. However, the indictment linked above just seems to have charges in it. Is my understanding incorrect?