WEBVTT - Trump Supports Stone, Backs Down on Student Visas 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:05.720 You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grazzo from Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:10.360 Roger Stone has always been a controversial figure in American politics, 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.080 and President Trump's commutation of his prison sentence is no 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.040 less controversial. On Friday, Trump issued a commutation for his 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.160 longtime ally, who had been sentenced to three years in 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.800 prison for witness tampering and lying to Congress. Joining me 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.840 is former federal prosecutor Revert Mints, a partner at Carter. 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:33.720 In English, residential pardon powers are extremely broad. So is 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:38.320 this pardon of Roger Stone clearly within them. It's absolutely 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.680 within the president's power. The act of pardon is essentially 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.280 the president for giving somebody for a crime that they committed. 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.320 It's rooted in Article to section two of the United 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.520 States Constitution, and it wipes the slate clean for the recipient, 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:59.280 even halting judicial proceedings that maybe underway. That's what a partner, 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:03.480 a communtationation. By contrast, which is what the President gave 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.880 to Riser Stone, makes a punishment milder. In this case. 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.119 It eliminated the prison sentence altogether, but it does not 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:13.640 wipe out the underlying conviction. Just let's go back a 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:18.119 moment and explain what roger Stone was convicted of and 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.720 the prison term he was facing. Roger Stone went to 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:27.320 trial facing seven counts. He ultimately was convicted on all 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.479 of those seven counts, including five counts of lying to Congress, 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.400 one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:38.560 of a proceeding. Basically, what those charges focused on was 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:44.000 stone sworn testimony in September seen before the House Intelligence 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:48.880 Committee in which he allegedly misled the committee on several 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.400 key elements of their probe. He was also charged with 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.720 witness tampering by urging a former associate, a man named 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:58.760 Randy Cretico, to exercise his fisthem en and rights and 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:03.080 to not cooperate with the committee. President Trump has issued 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:08.240 three dozen clemencies in three years, and critics find a 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:13.280 problem with them in that he avoids the office of 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.960 Pardon Attorney, which is the office that presidents normally go 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:23.840 to because it's their duty to examine clemencies. So our 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:28.200 President Trump has issued twenty five pardons and eleven commutations 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:32.040 during his term in office. The standard procedure for presidents 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:36.000 is selected Justice Department that these possible pardons and commutations, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.639 and they actually have a series of guidelines that they 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.240 enforced in considering whether or not to grant clemency, and 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:48.840 this department within the Department of Justice investigates and reviews, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.400 and it makes a recommendation to the president. In this case, 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:57.959 President Trump tends to not follow the advice of the 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.760 Office of Partner Attorney or in many case says he 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.440 has granted clemencies and situations where a request and not 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:07.480 even been filed with the Office of Pardon Attorney. So 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.840 he is departing from the standard practice that many presidents 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:13.880 have used in the past, which is to rely on 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.960 the Department of Justice, the professionals who have institutional knowledge 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:21.080 of how pardons and clemencies are typically granted, and in 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.880 this case is acting more on his own without following 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.240 those godlines, or, as they said earlier, in many cases, 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:29.560 without even the request having been made to that office 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.560 in the first place. Many presidents have faced criticism for 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:38.200 how they used their pardon powers. Some say this particular 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.720 pardon stands out because President Trump is granting clemency to 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:47.800 someone who is convicted of lying to protect him the president, 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:50.720 it's useful to put this into context. The history of 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:55.200 presidential clemencies is replete with disputes over the years of 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.360 whether or not these clemencies ought to have been handed 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:00.760 down in the first place. As any example in n 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.040 Lawrence Walls, she was then the Independent Council investigating their 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.480 rand contrasts, there filed a new indictment against former Defense 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:13.080 Secretary Casper Weinberger. Then President H. W. Bush responded the 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:17.640 next month by pardoning Mr Weinberger and five others. Bill Clinton, 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.800 for example, issued more than a seventy five partners or 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:24.479 commutations on his last day in office, including one to 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:29.560 his half brother Roger. Clinton had several other former administration officials. 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.960 He also pardoned Susan McDougall, a former business partner from 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:35.880 Mark and Saw who spent twenty one months behind bars 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:40.320 refusing for refusing to cooperate with the Independent Council kind 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.040 of start in the investigation of the Whitewater land venture. 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.280 That case, so it's important to point out, is one 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.080 in which Susan McDougal had already served her sentence and 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.880 has been released. But the biggest fear that came about 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.760 during the Clinton administration was the pardon at the end 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.560 of his term of financier Mark Rich, who had fled 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.640 the country to avoid charge of evading forty billion dollars 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:06.520 in taxes and obcame clemency after his ex wife, Denise Rich, 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:10.680 a Democratic donor, contributed money to Mr Clemon's presidential library. 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.800 So there have been other controversial pardons or commutations in 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:19.719 the past. What sets this apart is that this individual, 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.880 rise or Stone, was the first one to be pardoned 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:28.520 in connection with the investigation into the alleged ties between 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.560 the Trump campaign and Russia and the dump of the 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.240 Wiki Leaks documents. So the argument for those who are 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.120 critics of this decision is to say that Mr Trump 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:44.680 essentially rewarded somebody for not cooperating with prosecutors and perhaps 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:50.279 withholding information ultimately could have led to charges against the president, 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.160 or at least perhaps to have tied the president to 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.159 information that showed that the Trump campaign had knowledge of 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.920 these Wiki Leaks dumps, which were used in the end 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.280 of the campaign to try to discredit Mrs Clinton, who 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.600 was at the time running for presidents against Mr Trump. 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:10.839 I've been talking to Robert Manson, McCarter and English about 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:15.320 Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence Roger Stone's case in 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:20.640 particular has drawn criticism from many people because it was 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.839 also the case in which four prosecutors for the line 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.960 prosecutors in the case resigned from the case rather than 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.560 revised their sentencing recommendation. This case seems to be one 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:38.200 where time after time there's controversy. In this case has 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.760 been controversial right from the get go. It started with 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:46.840 the arrest of Roger Stone, where critics of the Department 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:50.239 of Justice claimed that they came down with an army 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:55.720 of investigators and FBI agents overkill in the in the 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.479 circumstances of Roger Stone, who was asleep in his house 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.760 with his wife. Uh. And then it just went on 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:05.240 from there with one controversy after another. The latest controversy 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:09.320 prior to this commutation of a sentence was the sentencing 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.320 of Riser Stone itself, and that was a case where 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.640 prosecutors had filed the sentencing memorandum calling for Stone to 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.800 receive between seven and nine years in prison. The President 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.280 tweeted that he thought that that recommendation was horrible and 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:26.880 very unfair and the miscarriage of justice. And then within 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.400 hours the Justice Department told reporters that there was a 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.320 mistake in the filing of that sensing memorandum, which again 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.360 had been filed with the court, had been presented to 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.000 the judge, and the Department of Justice withdrew that recommendation 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.160 and ultimately replaced it with a sentencing memorandum that recommended 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.960 a more lenient sentence, And the move was considered so 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.440 outrageous that the four career prosecutors who were handling the 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.560 trial quit the case in protests. One of them in 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:59.160 fact resigned from the Department Justice whiltogether, and the revised 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.280 recommendation of ultimately went to the court for more lean 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:06.480 sentence was signed only by the then acting U S Attorney, 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.040 who had been a former aid of Bill Barr had 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.080 had been installed in the post less than two weeks earlier. Well, 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.840 it's interesting there is ultimately when the sentence was handed down, 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.920 that the jug did hand down a sentence that was 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:24.720 less severe than the original recommendation by the original prosecutors. 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.240 It was more in line with what the bar recommendation 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:32.840 m suggested. And Bill barr Uh to this day has 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:37.160 maintained that the prosecution of Roser Stone was righteous. As 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:39.760 he put it, he believed it was a legitimate prosecution, 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.120 and he believed the ultimate sentence of forty months was there. 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.360 So he has taken a position directly contrary to the 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.440 President here by believing that the prostitution was not a 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:51.520 witch chunk, that it was a fair prosecution at the 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.320 at the sentence but ultimately was handed down here was 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:59.400 the correct one. This means that the conviction against Stone 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.679 is still intact. He's appealing his conviction, says he wants 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.560 to overturn it and clear his name. How difficult is 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:11.680 it to get a conviction like his reversed on appeal. 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.640 The fact that the President here issued a commutation of 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.680 sentence rather than a part means that the appeal of 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.440 this conviction will continue to go forward. The appeal is 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.080 ensures that the facts tied to the Stone case, which 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.199 includes evidence that the President knew about Wiki Leak's plans 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:36.040 to release the hacked emails damaging to Mrs Clinton's sixteen campaign, 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.200 that will continue to be an issue. It also means 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.400 that there will be an odd circumstance here where the 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.400 Attorney General William Barr and his Justice Department will continue 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:51.320 to defend that conviction despite the fact that the President 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:56.000 has condemned the prosecution as being unfair. The issues on 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:02.040 appeal are essentially that the charges were politically motivated. Mr 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.720 Stone has claimed that the charges were fabricated and that 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.160 he was denied to stay our trial by an unbiased 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.760 judge and by an honest jury. So he is going 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.679 after a sort of broad range of charges about the 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:18.920 entire process being unfair, and UH is trying to, I think, 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:23.239 particularly focus on comments that were made by the jury 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.600 for woman who later it turns out to have been 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:31.640 someone who has tweeted about the president in an unfavorable way, 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:33.520 and he's going to argue that he should have been 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.160 granted a new trial based on the fact that this 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.160 jury forum woman had not disclosed certain information about her 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:45.400 prior political conduct which was UH not supportive of the president. 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:48.840 The fact that this is a commutation rather than a 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.840 pardon means that Roger Stone can still plead the fifth 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:59.040 if he's ever called to testify against the president. One 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:04.360 of the distinctions between the pardon and the commutation is 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:09.360 that not only is the underlying conviction still standing, which 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.200 gives riser Stone the right to clear his name, which 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:14.360 is what riser Stone wanted. By the way, he was 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.800 not looking for a full pardon because he believes that 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:19.960 he was wrongly convicted and wants the opportunity to clear 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.920 his name in court. But one of the other consequences 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:28.080 of the commutation is that it raises this interesting question 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:30.920 about whether Mr Stone will continue to have a Fifth 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.840 Amendment right if he were to be subpoened before a 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:38.200 grand jury and ask questions about his involvement with Wicky 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.720 Leaks and what he may or may not have told 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:45.480 the President about that situation during the campaign. Does the 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:50.439 President commuting Roger Stone's sentence before he goes to prison 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.400 and before he appeals his case, does it put a 0:11:54.520 --> 0:12:00.640 question mark about the fairness of the justice system. Critics 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.319 of the president would suggest that he has wielded the 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:08.000 pardon power in a more overtly political way than many 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:12.040 of his predecessors. For example, the President pardoned former Arizona 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:17.560 Sheriff Joe or Pio in August of regarding our Pio's 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:22.200 ongoing legal battle and his conviction for contempt of court. 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.520 That was a case in which our Pio had been 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:30.200 supporting the President's agenda regarding illegal immigration. Another example was 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.640 the partnering of Scooter Libby, who was former Vice President 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:38.640 Dick Cheney's age, he was pardoned by the president. Another 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:42.560 pardon that many people viewed as more political than in 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:45.480 the national interest was a pardon of former New York 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.120 City Police Commissioner Bernie Carrick, who was sinced to four 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.280 years in prison for failure to pay taxes. I'm lying 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:55.120 to White House officials. He also pardoned former Illinois Governor 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:58.960 Rod Blogoyevic to Democrats, had been convicted of public corruption, 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:03.200 and it actually been on the President's reality television show, 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:05.559 which is how he got to know him. So there 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:10.440 is this thread going through many of President Trump's pardons 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.880 and commutations in which each of these individuals either know 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.000 him personally or no, a family member or no. Somebody 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:20.840 knows it well. And each of these individuals, at least 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.120 in the President's eyes, were either wrongly convicted or given 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:26.840 a sentence that was too harsh. But they all in 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.480 some way are tied either to the President personally or 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.960 to the president's agenda. And that's why many of the 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:37.040 critics are saying that he's using the presidential partner computation 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.440 power in a way that is unprecedented and inconsistent with 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:44.320 the way the former presidents have used this very important 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:53.439 and essentially unchecked power. That's Robert McCarter and English. The 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:57.920 government backed down from a high profile confrontation with Harvard University, 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.760 M I T and hundreds of other college just over 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:04.360 foreign student visas, ending a standoff that could have sent 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.600 thousands of foreign students back to their home countries and 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.000 left schools scrambling to plan for the fall. A federal 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.600 judge announced the government had agreed to rescind a new 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:17.320 policy requiring international students to take at least one in 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:21.400 person class, permitting the foreign students to take online classes 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.840 only during the health crisis. Joining me is Leon Fresco, 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.840 a partner at Hollandon Knight. Leon. Let's start with a 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.160 little bit of background explain what the government did in 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:35.400 its July six directive. So here's what happened. We had 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:39.520 a normally functioning student visa system for many, many years, 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:44.000 and then when COVID nineteen struck America in January and 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.880 then really really started to strike in March, I started 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:52.040 to have a problem because university started closing down. And 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.520 so the question was what would I do with all 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.680 of these foreign students? Because the existing state of The 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.160 law had been for many years that you cannot get 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.440 a student visa to come to America to take fully 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.880 online classes. The limit was you can only take three 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.720 hours a week of online class and you needed to 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.240 take at least nine additional hours per weeks of in 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.080 person education. So that's the law, that's the laws that existence. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.920 I suspended that law in March because obviously students had 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.360 paid tuition they did here and there was no use 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.520 in saying they have to leave anyway because there were 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.040 no planes that would have taken them home. And so 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.360 they said students can finish their term online and this 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.680 would create no problems. The question that became now that 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.240 we had some time and some critical distance, what would 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.680 you do with September in a world where it was 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.320 unclear whether schools would stay open, whether they would close 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:51.800 down and do online, or whether they would do a 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.040 bix of both. And so then because of that, I 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:58.960 thought about the problem and the issue guidance that said, 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.360 if the who has any in person components, then the 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:05.680 students could remain in the United States and go to 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.960 the school. But if the school was a fully online school, 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.840 there was no reason for the students to remain in 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:16.640 the United States. And so there's so many dimensions and 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.320 the levels to look at that problem. Because if you 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:23.920 look at it as purely appointing headed immigration questions, I 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.680 have no doubt that that's the correct decision, because you 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.400 can't be in America for the purpose of doing something 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.560 that the visa does not permitt you to do. But 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.600 if you look at it as a practical question, you 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:40.920 start asking yourselves, well, what are these actual human beings 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.720 who are here supposed to do? Are they supposed to, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:46.640 you know, they now paid for two years of college 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:49.200 or three years of college. Are they supposed to go 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:51.400 home and risk that they'll never come back again and 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:53.640 never be able to us in this school. Are they 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.760 supposed to subject themselves to flight that might in endanger them? 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.080 Are they supposed to, you know, go to school where 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:04.760 that might endanger them? Whereas you know, there is a 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:07.399 very simple solusion which the people stay home with is 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:10.560 what they've been doing and takes the classes. And so 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.760 if you look at it from that perspective, it seems 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.639 very harsh, you know, what you would do to these 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:21.359 foreign students. And so those are the two main competing issues, 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.840 plus the third issue of the general desire by this 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:28.600 administration to want to open schools, and they're desire to 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.840 use any lever possible to accomplish that. Are there some 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.480 students who actually might not be able to return home 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.520 because of restrictions in their country on people coming from 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:44.880 the United States. There are countries that have completely banned 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.760 re entry of anybody from that country. So, for instance, 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.399 if you're coming from Venezuela or you're coming from some 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.280 other countries in South America, you just can't come back 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.439 in the country. There are others where it's hard to 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.479 get in but it can be done, and there are 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.480 others where it's easier to get in. So it just 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.280 depends on the student. And that's the perfect that's the 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.040 perfect kind of thing where if you had a blanket rule, 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:14.359 what you would want to do is put an exception 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.680 in for that exact concept, which is fine. You want 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.600 to have a rule that says you can't study purely online. 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.399 One of the exceptions you might want to build into 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.119 that is but if the student can't return home because 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:30.480 there are no flights available to that students country, then 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:32.600 that might want to be an exception that you make 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:37.880 for instance. So these are rules of ICE. Does ICE 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:42.240 have the power to make these rules and regulations on 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.399 its own? Yeah, So what happens is there's a student 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:49.480 needs a statute that's created by Congress in the Immigration 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:53.320 of Nationality Act, and that gives broad delegations to the 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.880 Department of Homeland Security RID Large, which sends the Department 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.719 of Homeland Security then designated to I to run this 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.040 thing called the Student and Exchange Visitor Programs. And the 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.080 Student Exchanged Visitor Program issued regulations a long time ago 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:11.760 that were done appropriately, with notice in comment, and with 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.760 all the proper procedures that said, when you come here 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.000 to the United States, you have to be coming to 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.720 the United States to physically attend school and could only 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:25.320 spend no more than three hours offline. Those rules were relaxed, 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:27.560 and what could argue there was no basis to relax 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.159 those rules. But in the end, nobody was going to 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:33.119 oppose that because we were in the middle of a 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:36.960 COVID crisis. But those rules were relaxed to say that 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:41.560 students could fully attend online last semester. The question was 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:45.400 whether those relaxed rules should be maintained for this semester. 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:50.040 Liam was there any common claim in all these federal lawsuits. Yeah, 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.439 there's basically three separate claims, and by the way, there 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.479 should be more claims, I think, but there's three basic claims. 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.199 One claim is that this was a new rule that 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.800 was announced with a formal notice and comment rulemaking. That's 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.000 number one. That's the simple enough claim. Eating you know 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.720 you're changing the whole system here, How are you going 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:11.359 to do that unless you put notice in comments. The 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:15.879 second was that the rule itself as arbitrary and capricius 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.400 because it's not serving a purpose. And so the way 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.320 that would play out is the judge would ask what 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.119 is the purpose of this rule, and the government's going 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:27.880 to have to say, well, the purpose of this rule 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:32.600 is to keep people out who aren't legitimate students. And 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:34.919 the point would be in return, well, we already know 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.120 these are are legitimate students. They've been here, they've been studying. 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:41.600 This isn't about issue in some new visas. This is 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:45.000 about the legitimate students that were already here. Why can't 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.399 they just stay here and finish their degree? And I 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.320 think it will be hard to articulate a reason why 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.160 you need to punish those people and kick them out 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.840 of the country rather than let them finish their degree here. 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.560 And then the third one is sort of a due 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.760 process type of claim, with the sort of the idea 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:08.040 that the government's endangering the safety of these individuals who 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:10.320 are here by either forcing them to go to school, 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.359 which might endanger their safety, or by forcing them to 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.639 take an airplane that they don't, you know, want to 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.679 take if they're sick or whatever, that might endanger them 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:22.080 if they're taking one or two or three or four flights, 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:24.960 however many it takes to get to their ultimate destinations, 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.320 that that entire process could endanger the person as well, 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:30.880 and that that would be a reason that you would 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:33.919 build some sort of health exception into this. The government 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.520 capitulated only eight days after it had announced the directive. 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:41.399 The judge announced the recision of the directive at the 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:45.000 very start of the hearing in Boston. What happened, I 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.560 think what happened was there were so many lawsuits that 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:51.440 had been filed in the last twenty four hours. It 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:55.080 was gonna have to be defended in so many different venues. 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:57.920 And the fact that the results of all of those 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.600 different lawsuits would have meant that by the tide you 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.119 got to the Supreme court, it would have been in 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:07.520 the middle of the semester. I think they decided it's 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:10.560 not worth it to have this kind of uncertainty for 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.359 students here who are ultimately trying to figure out what 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:17.360 the law is to supply by and they can't control 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:19.840 either what their school does or what these courts do, 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:22.960 and so I think that's why they pulled out of disguised. 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.200 So where does this leave their their guidance where so 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:29.600 we have been talking about the concept of do they 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:33.040 revert back to the original regulations or to March and 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.440 so what was actually quite stunning is that they reverted 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:39.919 back to March. So the guidance is at the moment 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.200 that if you are pursuing your course of study, even 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:45.919 if it's completely online, you could do it from the 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:50.640 United States. Now what's still unclear is whether visas will 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:53.359 be granted, because some embassies are opening this week and 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:55.680 next week for people who are going to come to 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.879 the United States to do only online education. At the moment, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.800 there's nothing theoretically preventing that. But my suspicion is that 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.240 somewhere along the line, the administration is going to try 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:12.000 to block that again, because it's one thing to treat 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:15.120 the people here fairly. But it's another thing to see 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.280 whether the administration will let people come to the United 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:22.280 States for the purpose of studying online. This March guidance, 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.600 this guidance now wasn't adopted under the rules of the 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:31.199 Administrative Procedure Act, correct, It was just emergency. It was 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:35.280 an emergency memorandum that said, we will not say that 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:37.800 anyone is out of status as long as they're taking 0:23:38.200 --> 0:23:41.159 that classes they're supposed to take, regardless of whether they 0:23:41.200 --> 0:23:44.880 are online or not. And what the administration has decided 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:47.440 to do by settlement, which there are certainly allowed to do, 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:50.919 and if it becomes a settlement effectually entered by the courts, 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:53.600 and that's the force of law, so that's even stronger 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:56.440 than a regulation, which would be to keep the March 0:23:56.520 --> 0:23:59.520 guidance going for a certain period. So we'd have to 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.600 see what's in the actual settlement. But the Court a 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:05.720 orally announced the settlement. And what the court said is 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:09.120 that that orally that that settlement is that they will 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:11.320 revert back to the March guidance and they will in 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:14.160 no way try to enforce any of the guidance that's 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:19.920 benetued in July. What does the law say about international students? 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:24.120 The regulations that governance the student in exchange visitor program 0:24:24.480 --> 0:24:27.720