The American presidency is vested with many overt powers, but one of the most important powers of the office is implicit, and that's the power of rhetoric.
. On the second page of the document, prosecutors stressed that Trump was free to, essentially, lie: “The defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.”
That level of language discipline, Pfeiffer said, “was a huge transition from the campaign for Obama and all of us.” “I think that the bully pulpit is one of the more unique tools that is available to a president that other branches of government or government officials can’t utilize in the same way,” presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky said. “Because it is a powerful tool, presidents have to wield it carefully and with great thought and intention.”
“He’s allowed to lie. That’s not the conduct that’s charged. What’s important is what the indictment says he did,” said Carrie Cordero, senior fellow and general counsel at Center for a New American Security and a former Justice Department official. “And what he did was try to use — try to corrupt, really — different institutions of government in furtherance of the conspiracy to defraud the United States ... to try to prevent the election outcome.
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