Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grazzo from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Roger Stone has always been a controversial figure in American politics,
Speaker 1: and President Trump's commutation of his prison sentence is no
Speaker 1: less controversial. On Friday, Trump issued a commutation for his
Speaker 1: longtime ally, who had been sentenced to three years in
Speaker 1: prison for witness tampering and lying to Congress. Joining me
Speaker 1: is former federal prosecutor Revert Mints, a partner at Carter.
Speaker 1: In English, residential pardon powers are extremely broad. So is
Speaker 1: this pardon of Roger Stone clearly within them. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: within the president's power. The act of pardon is essentially
Speaker 1: the president for giving somebody for a crime that they committed.
Speaker 1: It's rooted in Article to section two of the United
Speaker 1: States Constitution, and it wipes the slate clean for the recipient,
Speaker 1: even halting judicial proceedings that maybe underway. That's what a partner,
Speaker 1: a communtationation. By contrast, which is what the President gave
Speaker 1: to Riser Stone, makes a punishment milder. In this case.
Speaker 1: It eliminated the prison sentence altogether, but it does not
Speaker 1: wipe out the underlying conviction. Just let's go back a
Speaker 1: moment and explain what roger Stone was convicted of and
Speaker 1: the prison term he was facing. Roger Stone went to
Speaker 1: trial facing seven counts. He ultimately was convicted on all
Speaker 1: of those seven counts, including five counts of lying to Congress,
Speaker 1: one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction
Speaker 1: of a proceeding. Basically, what those charges focused on was
Speaker 1: stone sworn testimony in September seen before the House Intelligence
Speaker 1: Committee in which he allegedly misled the committee on several
Speaker 1: key elements of their probe. He was also charged with
Speaker 1: witness tampering by urging a former associate, a man named
Speaker 1: Randy Cretico, to exercise his fisthem en and rights and
Speaker 1: to not cooperate with the committee. President Trump has issued
Speaker 1: three dozen clemencies in three years, and critics find a
Speaker 1: problem with them in that he avoids the office of
Speaker 1: Pardon Attorney, which is the office that presidents normally go
Speaker 1: to because it's their duty to examine clemencies. So our
Speaker 1: President Trump has issued twenty five pardons and eleven commutations
Speaker 1: during his term in office. The standard procedure for presidents
Speaker 1: is selected Justice Department that these possible pardons and commutations,
Speaker 1: and they actually have a series of guidelines that they
Speaker 1: enforced in considering whether or not to grant clemency, and
Speaker 1: this department within the Department of Justice investigates and reviews,
Speaker 1: and it makes a recommendation to the president. In this case,
Speaker 1: President Trump tends to not follow the advice of the
Speaker 1: Office of Partner Attorney or in many case says he
Speaker 1: has granted clemencies and situations where a request and not
Speaker 1: even been filed with the Office of Pardon Attorney. So
Speaker 1: he is departing from the standard practice that many presidents
Speaker 1: have used in the past, which is to rely on
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, the professionals who have institutional knowledge
Speaker 1: of how pardons and clemencies are typically granted, and in
Speaker 1: this case is acting more on his own without following
Speaker 1: those godlines, or, as they said earlier, in many cases,
Speaker 1: without even the request having been made to that office
Speaker 1: in the first place. Many presidents have faced criticism for
Speaker 1: how they used their pardon powers. Some say this particular
Speaker 1: pardon stands out because President Trump is granting clemency to
Speaker 1: someone who is convicted of lying to protect him the president,
Speaker 1: it's useful to put this into context. The history of
Speaker 1: presidential clemencies is replete with disputes over the years of
Speaker 1: whether or not these clemencies ought to have been handed
Speaker 1: down in the first place. As any example in n
Speaker 1: Lawrence Walls, she was then the Independent Council investigating their
Speaker 1: rand contrasts, there filed a new indictment against former Defense
Speaker 1: Secretary Casper Weinberger. Then President H. W. Bush responded the
Speaker 1: next month by pardoning Mr Weinberger and five others. Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: for example, issued more than a seventy five partners or
Speaker 1: commutations on his last day in office, including one to
Speaker 1: his half brother Roger. Clinton had several other former administration officials.
Speaker 1: He also pardoned Susan McDougall, a former business partner from
Speaker 1: Mark and Saw who spent twenty one months behind bars
Speaker 1: refusing for refusing to cooperate with the Independent Council kind
Speaker 1: of start in the investigation of the Whitewater land venture.
Speaker 1: That case, so it's important to point out, is one
Speaker 1: in which Susan McDougal had already served her sentence and
Speaker 1: has been released. But the biggest fear that came about
Speaker 1: during the Clinton administration was the pardon at the end
Speaker 1: of his term of financier Mark Rich, who had fled
Speaker 1: the country to avoid charge of evading forty billion dollars
Speaker 1: in taxes and obcame clemency after his ex wife, Denise Rich,
Speaker 1: a Democratic donor, contributed money to Mr Clemon's presidential library.
Speaker 1: So there have been other controversial pardons or commutations in
Speaker 1: the past. What sets this apart is that this individual,
Speaker 1: rise or Stone, was the first one to be pardoned
Speaker 1: in connection with the investigation into the alleged ties between
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign and Russia and the dump of the
Speaker 1: Wiki Leaks documents. So the argument for those who are
Speaker 1: critics of this decision is to say that Mr Trump
Speaker 1: essentially rewarded somebody for not cooperating with prosecutors and perhaps
Speaker 1: withholding information ultimately could have led to charges against the president,
Speaker 1: or at least perhaps to have tied the president to
Speaker 1: information that showed that the Trump campaign had knowledge of
Speaker 1: these Wiki Leaks dumps, which were used in the end
Speaker 1: of the campaign to try to discredit Mrs Clinton, who
Speaker 1: was at the time running for presidents against Mr Trump.
Speaker 1: I've been talking to Robert Manson, McCarter and English about
Speaker 1: Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence Roger Stone's case in
Speaker 1: particular has drawn criticism from many people because it was
Speaker 1: also the case in which four prosecutors for the line
Speaker 1: prosecutors in the case resigned from the case rather than
Speaker 1: revised their sentencing recommendation. This case seems to be one
Speaker 1: where time after time there's controversy. In this case has
Speaker 1: been controversial right from the get go. It started with
Speaker 1: the arrest of Roger Stone, where critics of the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice claimed that they came down with an army
Speaker 1: of investigators and FBI agents overkill in the in the
Speaker 1: circumstances of Roger Stone, who was asleep in his house
Speaker 1: with his wife. Uh. And then it just went on
Speaker 1: from there with one controversy after another. The latest controversy
Speaker 1: prior to this commutation of a sentence was the sentencing
Speaker 1: of Riser Stone itself, and that was a case where
Speaker 1: prosecutors had filed the sentencing memorandum calling for Stone to
Speaker 1: receive between seven and nine years in prison. The President
Speaker 1: tweeted that he thought that that recommendation was horrible and
Speaker 1: very unfair and the miscarriage of justice. And then within
Speaker 1: hours the Justice Department told reporters that there was a
Speaker 1: mistake in the filing of that sensing memorandum, which again
Speaker 1: had been filed with the court, had been presented to
Speaker 1: the judge, and the Department of Justice withdrew that recommendation
Speaker 1: and ultimately replaced it with a sentencing memorandum that recommended
Speaker 1: a more lenient sentence, And the move was considered so
Speaker 1: outrageous that the four career prosecutors who were handling the
Speaker 1: trial quit the case in protests. One of them in
Speaker 1: fact resigned from the Department Justice whiltogether, and the revised
Speaker 1: recommendation of ultimately went to the court for more lean
Speaker 1: sentence was signed only by the then acting U S Attorney,
Speaker 1: who had been a former aid of Bill Barr had
Speaker 1: had been installed in the post less than two weeks earlier. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting there is ultimately when the sentence was handed down,
Speaker 1: that the jug did hand down a sentence that was
Speaker 1: less severe than the original recommendation by the original prosecutors.
Speaker 1: It was more in line with what the bar recommendation
Speaker 1: m suggested. And Bill barr Uh to this day has
Speaker 1: maintained that the prosecution of Roser Stone was righteous. As
Speaker 1: he put it, he believed it was a legitimate prosecution,
Speaker 1: and he believed the ultimate sentence of forty months was there.
Speaker 1: So he has taken a position directly contrary to the
Speaker 1: President here by believing that the prostitution was not a
Speaker 1: witch chunk, that it was a fair prosecution at the
Speaker 1: at the sentence but ultimately was handed down here was
Speaker 1: the correct one. This means that the conviction against Stone
Speaker 1: is still intact. He's appealing his conviction, says he wants
Speaker 1: to overturn it and clear his name. How difficult is
Speaker 1: it to get a conviction like his reversed on appeal.
Speaker 1: The fact that the President here issued a commutation of
Speaker 1: sentence rather than a part means that the appeal of
Speaker 1: this conviction will continue to go forward. The appeal is
Speaker 1: ensures that the facts tied to the Stone case, which
Speaker 1: includes evidence that the President knew about Wiki Leak's plans
Speaker 1: to release the hacked emails damaging to Mrs Clinton's sixteen campaign,
Speaker 1: that will continue to be an issue. It also means
Speaker 1: that there will be an odd circumstance here where the
Speaker 1: Attorney General William Barr and his Justice Department will continue
Speaker 1: to defend that conviction despite the fact that the President
Speaker 1: has condemned the prosecution as being unfair. The issues on
Speaker 1: appeal are essentially that the charges were politically motivated. Mr
Speaker 1: Stone has claimed that the charges were fabricated and that
Speaker 1: he was denied to stay our trial by an unbiased
Speaker 1: judge and by an honest jury. So he is going
Speaker 1: after a sort of broad range of charges about the
Speaker 1: entire process being unfair, and UH is trying to, I think,
Speaker 1: particularly focus on comments that were made by the jury
Speaker 1: for woman who later it turns out to have been
Speaker 1: someone who has tweeted about the president in an unfavorable way,
Speaker 1: and he's going to argue that he should have been
Speaker 1: granted a new trial based on the fact that this
Speaker 1: jury forum woman had not disclosed certain information about her
Speaker 1: prior political conduct which was UH not supportive of the president.
Speaker 1: The fact that this is a commutation rather than a
Speaker 1: pardon means that Roger Stone can still plead the fifth
Speaker 1: if he's ever called to testify against the president. One
Speaker 1: of the distinctions between the pardon and the commutation is
Speaker 1: that not only is the underlying conviction still standing, which
Speaker 1: gives riser Stone the right to clear his name, which
Speaker 1: is what riser Stone wanted. By the way, he was
Speaker 1: not looking for a full pardon because he believes that
Speaker 1: he was wrongly convicted and wants the opportunity to clear
Speaker 1: his name in court. But one of the other consequences
Speaker 1: of the commutation is that it raises this interesting question
Speaker 1: about whether Mr Stone will continue to have a Fifth
Speaker 1: Amendment right if he were to be subpoened before a
Speaker 1: grand jury and ask questions about his involvement with Wicky
Speaker 1: Leaks and what he may or may not have told
Speaker 1: the President about that situation during the campaign. Does the
Speaker 1: President commuting Roger Stone's sentence before he goes to prison
Speaker 1: and before he appeals his case, does it put a
Speaker 1: question mark about the fairness of the justice system. Critics
Speaker 1: of the president would suggest that he has wielded the
Speaker 1: pardon power in a more overtly political way than many
Speaker 1: of his predecessors. For example, the President pardoned former Arizona
Speaker 1: Sheriff Joe or Pio in August of regarding our Pio's
Speaker 1: ongoing legal battle and his conviction for contempt of court.
Speaker 1: That was a case in which our Pio had been
Speaker 1: supporting the President's agenda regarding illegal immigration. Another example was
Speaker 1: the partnering of Scooter Libby, who was former Vice President
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney's age, he was pardoned by the president. Another
Speaker 1: pardon that many people viewed as more political than in
Speaker 1: the national interest was a pardon of former New York
Speaker 1: City Police Commissioner Bernie Carrick, who was sinced to four
Speaker 1: years in prison for failure to pay taxes. I'm lying
Speaker 1: to White House officials. He also pardoned former Illinois Governor
Speaker 1: Rod Blogoyevic to Democrats, had been convicted of public corruption,
Speaker 1: and it actually been on the President's reality television show,
Speaker 1: which is how he got to know him. So there
Speaker 1: is this thread going through many of President Trump's pardons
Speaker 1: and commutations in which each of these individuals either know
Speaker 1: him personally or no, a family member or no. Somebody
Speaker 1: knows it well. And each of these individuals, at least
Speaker 1: in the President's eyes, were either wrongly convicted or given
Speaker 1: a sentence that was too harsh. But they all in
Speaker 1: some way are tied either to the President personally or
Speaker 1: to the president's agenda. And that's why many of the
Speaker 1: critics are saying that he's using the presidential partner computation
Speaker 1: power in a way that is unprecedented and inconsistent with
Speaker 1: the way the former presidents have used this very important
Speaker 1: and essentially unchecked power. That's Robert McCarter and English. The
Speaker 1: government backed down from a high profile confrontation with Harvard University,
Speaker 1: M I T and hundreds of other college just over
Speaker 1: foreign student visas, ending a standoff that could have sent
Speaker 1: thousands of foreign students back to their home countries and
Speaker 1: left schools scrambling to plan for the fall. A federal
Speaker 1: judge announced the government had agreed to rescind a new
Speaker 1: policy requiring international students to take at least one in
Speaker 1: person class, permitting the foreign students to take online classes
Speaker 1: only during the health crisis. Joining me is Leon Fresco,
Speaker 1: a partner at Hollandon Knight. Leon. Let's start with a
Speaker 1: little bit of background explain what the government did in
Speaker 1: its July six directive. So here's what happened. We had
Speaker 1: a normally functioning student visa system for many, many years,
Speaker 1: and then when COVID nineteen struck America in January and
Speaker 1: then really really started to strike in March, I started
Speaker 1: to have a problem because university started closing down. And
Speaker 1: so the question was what would I do with all
Speaker 1: of these foreign students? Because the existing state of The
Speaker 1: law had been for many years that you cannot get
Speaker 1: a student visa to come to America to take fully
Speaker 1: online classes. The limit was you can only take three
Speaker 1: hours a week of online class and you needed to
Speaker 1: take at least nine additional hours per weeks of in
Speaker 1: person education. So that's the law, that's the laws that existence.
Speaker 1: I suspended that law in March because obviously students had
Speaker 1: paid tuition they did here and there was no use
Speaker 1: in saying they have to leave anyway because there were
Speaker 1: no planes that would have taken them home. And so
Speaker 1: they said students can finish their term online and this
Speaker 1: would create no problems. The question that became now that
Speaker 1: we had some time and some critical distance, what would
Speaker 1: you do with September in a world where it was
Speaker 1: unclear whether schools would stay open, whether they would close
Speaker 1: down and do online, or whether they would do a
Speaker 1: bix of both. And so then because of that, I
Speaker 1: thought about the problem and the issue guidance that said,
Speaker 1: if the who has any in person components, then the
Speaker 1: students could remain in the United States and go to
Speaker 1: the school. But if the school was a fully online school,
Speaker 1: there was no reason for the students to remain in
Speaker 1: the United States. And so there's so many dimensions and
Speaker 1: the levels to look at that problem. Because if you
Speaker 1: look at it as purely appointing headed immigration questions, I
Speaker 1: have no doubt that that's the correct decision, because you
Speaker 1: can't be in America for the purpose of doing something
Speaker 1: that the visa does not permitt you to do. But
Speaker 1: if you look at it as a practical question, you
Speaker 1: start asking yourselves, well, what are these actual human beings
Speaker 1: who are here supposed to do? Are they supposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, they now paid for two years of college
Speaker 1: or three years of college. Are they supposed to go
Speaker 1: home and risk that they'll never come back again and
Speaker 1: never be able to us in this school. Are they
Speaker 1: supposed to subject themselves to flight that might in endanger them?
Speaker 1: Are they supposed to, you know, go to school where
Speaker 1: that might endanger them? Whereas you know, there is a
Speaker 1: very simple solusion which the people stay home with is
Speaker 1: what they've been doing and takes the classes. And so
Speaker 1: if you look at it from that perspective, it seems
Speaker 1: very harsh, you know, what you would do to these
Speaker 1: foreign students. And so those are the two main competing issues,
Speaker 1: plus the third issue of the general desire by this
Speaker 1: administration to want to open schools, and they're desire to
Speaker 1: use any lever possible to accomplish that. Are there some
Speaker 1: students who actually might not be able to return home
Speaker 1: because of restrictions in their country on people coming from
Speaker 1: the United States. There are countries that have completely banned
Speaker 1: re entry of anybody from that country. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you're coming from Venezuela or you're coming from some
Speaker 1: other countries in South America, you just can't come back
Speaker 1: in the country. There are others where it's hard to
Speaker 1: get in but it can be done, and there are
Speaker 1: others where it's easier to get in. So it just
Speaker 1: depends on the student. And that's the perfect that's the
Speaker 1: perfect kind of thing where if you had a blanket rule,
Speaker 1: what you would want to do is put an exception
Speaker 1: in for that exact concept, which is fine. You want
Speaker 1: to have a rule that says you can't study purely online.
Speaker 1: One of the exceptions you might want to build into
Speaker 1: that is but if the student can't return home because
Speaker 1: there are no flights available to that students country, then
Speaker 1: that might want to be an exception that you make
Speaker 1: for instance. So these are rules of ICE. Does ICE
Speaker 1: have the power to make these rules and regulations on
Speaker 1: its own? Yeah, So what happens is there's a student
Speaker 1: needs a statute that's created by Congress in the Immigration
Speaker 1: of Nationality Act, and that gives broad delegations to the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security RID Large, which sends the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security then designated to I to run this
Speaker 1: thing called the Student and Exchange Visitor Programs. And the
Speaker 1: Student Exchanged Visitor Program issued regulations a long time ago
Speaker 1: that were done appropriately, with notice in comment, and with
Speaker 1: all the proper procedures that said, when you come here
Speaker 1: to the United States, you have to be coming to
Speaker 1: the United States to physically attend school and could only
Speaker 1: spend no more than three hours offline. Those rules were relaxed,
Speaker 1: and what could argue there was no basis to relax
Speaker 1: those rules. But in the end, nobody was going to
Speaker 1: oppose that because we were in the middle of a
Speaker 1: COVID crisis. But those rules were relaxed to say that
Speaker 1: students could fully attend online last semester. The question was
Speaker 1: whether those relaxed rules should be maintained for this semester.
Speaker 1: Liam was there any common claim in all these federal lawsuits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's basically three separate claims, and by the way, there
Speaker 1: should be more claims, I think, but there's three basic claims.
Speaker 1: One claim is that this was a new rule that
Speaker 1: was announced with a formal notice and comment rulemaking. That's
Speaker 1: number one. That's the simple enough claim. Eating you know
Speaker 1: you're changing the whole system here, How are you going
Speaker 1: to do that unless you put notice in comments. The
Speaker 1: second was that the rule itself as arbitrary and capricius
Speaker 1: because it's not serving a purpose. And so the way
Speaker 1: that would play out is the judge would ask what
Speaker 1: is the purpose of this rule, and the government's going
Speaker 1: to have to say, well, the purpose of this rule
Speaker 1: is to keep people out who aren't legitimate students. And
Speaker 1: the point would be in return, well, we already know
Speaker 1: these are are legitimate students. They've been here, they've been studying.
Speaker 1: This isn't about issue in some new visas. This is
Speaker 1: about the legitimate students that were already here. Why can't
Speaker 1: they just stay here and finish their degree? And I
Speaker 1: think it will be hard to articulate a reason why
Speaker 1: you need to punish those people and kick them out
Speaker 1: of the country rather than let them finish their degree here.
Speaker 1: And then the third one is sort of a due
Speaker 1: process type of claim, with the sort of the idea
Speaker 1: that the government's endangering the safety of these individuals who
Speaker 1: are here by either forcing them to go to school,
Speaker 1: which might endanger their safety, or by forcing them to
Speaker 1: take an airplane that they don't, you know, want to
Speaker 1: take if they're sick or whatever, that might endanger them
Speaker 1: if they're taking one or two or three or four flights,
Speaker 1: however many it takes to get to their ultimate destinations,
Speaker 1: that that entire process could endanger the person as well,
Speaker 1: and that that would be a reason that you would
Speaker 1: build some sort of health exception into this. The government
Speaker 1: capitulated only eight days after it had announced the directive.
Speaker 1: The judge announced the recision of the directive at the
Speaker 1: very start of the hearing in Boston. What happened, I
Speaker 1: think what happened was there were so many lawsuits that
Speaker 1: had been filed in the last twenty four hours. It
Speaker 1: was gonna have to be defended in so many different venues.
Speaker 1: And the fact that the results of all of those
Speaker 1: different lawsuits would have meant that by the tide you
Speaker 1: got to the Supreme court, it would have been in
Speaker 1: the middle of the semester. I think they decided it's
Speaker 1: not worth it to have this kind of uncertainty for
Speaker 1: students here who are ultimately trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: the law is to supply by and they can't control
Speaker 1: either what their school does or what these courts do,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's why they pulled out of disguised.
Speaker 1: So where does this leave their their guidance where so
Speaker 1: we have been talking about the concept of do they
Speaker 1: revert back to the original regulations or to March and
Speaker 1: so what was actually quite stunning is that they reverted
Speaker 1: back to March. So the guidance is at the moment
Speaker 1: that if you are pursuing your course of study, even
Speaker 1: if it's completely online, you could do it from the
Speaker 1: United States. Now what's still unclear is whether visas will
Speaker 1: be granted, because some embassies are opening this week and
Speaker 1: next week for people who are going to come to
Speaker 1: the United States to do only online education. At the moment,
Speaker 1: there's nothing theoretically preventing that. But my suspicion is that
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line, the administration is going to try
Speaker 1: to block that again, because it's one thing to treat
Speaker 1: the people here fairly. But it's another thing to see
Speaker 1: whether the administration will let people come to the United
Speaker 1: States for the purpose of studying online. This March guidance,
Speaker 1: this guidance now wasn't adopted under the rules of the
Speaker 1: Administrative Procedure Act, correct, It was just emergency. It was
Speaker 1: an emergency memorandum that said, we will not say that
Speaker 1: anyone is out of status as long as they're taking
Speaker 1: that classes they're supposed to take, regardless of whether they
Speaker 1: are online or not. And what the administration has decided
Speaker 1: to do by settlement, which there are certainly allowed to do,
Speaker 1: and if it becomes a settlement effectually entered by the courts,
Speaker 1: and that's the force of law, so that's even stronger
Speaker 1: than a regulation, which would be to keep the March
Speaker 1: guidance going for a certain period. So we'd have to
Speaker 1: see what's in the actual settlement. But the Court a
Speaker 1: orally announced the settlement. And what the court said is
Speaker 1: that that orally that that settlement is that they will
Speaker 1: revert back to the March guidance and they will in
Speaker 1: no way try to enforce any of the guidance that's
Speaker 1: benetued in July. What does the law say about international students?
Speaker 1: The regulations that governance the student in exchange visitor program
Speaker 1: says that a student cannot be lawfully in the United
Speaker 1: States if they're taking more than three hours of online classes.
Speaker 1: The March guidance was emergency guidance, which says that the
Speaker 1: student can take entirely online classes as long as they're
Speaker 1: actually taking them and the schools are verifying that they're
Speaker 1: taking them. Expectually, pretty easy for the schools to do
Speaker 1: because you're leaving a digital footprint every time you log into,
Speaker 1: whether it's Zoom or Microsoft Sees or something like that,
Speaker 1: and so the school can certainly verify that the student
Speaker 1: attended the class, and so under that scenario, the student
Speaker 1: maintaining their legal status. It's a little bit mind boggling
Speaker 1: to me that this happened so fast. The rule was
Speaker 1: put in last week and they had the lawsuits filed.
Speaker 1: They didn't even have a full court hearing before they decided, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take it all back. I think what happens,
Speaker 1: and the best example of this in the past was
Speaker 1: the first travel ban, where I think what happens is
Speaker 1: despite the intention of what the law is and what
Speaker 1: the people want to do with the law. They realized
Speaker 1: that the overwhelming weight of lawsuit. So we saw this
Speaker 1: from the travel ban, and we're seeing an ear. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can actually get to an issue where when you
Speaker 1: get to it, you know you're not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to win. And the problem is, as we said, the
Speaker 1: best case scenario for the administration was going to be
Speaker 1: to revert back to the guidance and literally lead to
Speaker 1: the removal of all the foreign students because no school
Speaker 1: is opening up completely and entirely. And so I just
Speaker 1: think in the end, the administration just didn't want to
Speaker 1: go there because they knew that the financial impact of
Speaker 1: doing that was actually more harmful to the United States
Speaker 1: than keeping people here in the United States who are
Speaker 1: taking money from their parents abroad and buying things and
Speaker 1: renting apartments and you know, buying clothes and food, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and so all of that is actually helpful to our
Speaker 1: economy at this time, as opposed to removing those people
Speaker 1: from the economy. From what you know, the schools didn't
Speaker 1: give in at all. They didn't make any concessions, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: It does that look like any concessions I've been given.
Speaker 1: The only questions that is still left up in the
Speaker 1: air that I don't think I've been resolved by today
Speaker 1: is that the administration agreed to bind itself with regard
Speaker 1: to new individuals coming into the United States. But my
Speaker 1: suspicion is, I don't think at the end of this one,
Speaker 1: this all plays out, that you will be able to
Speaker 1: get a visa to enter the United States to fully
Speaker 1: depend online. Clive, that's Leon Fresco of Holland and Night.
Speaker 1: I'm JOm Bosso and this is Bloomberg. Thank you.