Well, now it's time for our Bloomberg Law Report. It's brought to you by American Arbitration Association, International Trader Business Dispute Resolve Faster with the International Center for a Dispute Resolution, the leader in alternative dispute resolution around the world. I see DR dot org. Let's get to the legal stories we're watching this morning with Steve Podusk in the Bloomberg Washington Newsroom. More regulation may not be the best answer
to protecting the financial system against cyber attacks. Instead, Federal Reserve officials say am more flexible approach will be tried.
The Agriculture Department is withdrawing proposed biotechnology regulations that were issued under the Obama administration after critical public comments from indistrict groups, and a person familiar with the matter says Senate tax writers plan to keep the mortgage interest deduction limit at one million dollars, unlike House legislation that sets a calp of five hundred thousand dollars for new home sales. Bloomberg Law everything you need, all on one legal research platform,
including guidance analysis and Bloomberg Market Intelligence. Find out more at Bloomberg law dot com. Now in other legal news, let's take a look at the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the election, which is now said to focus on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. For more on this story, Bloomberg Law host Michael Best spoke with Andrew Kent, a professor at
Fordham University Law School. Andrew, what do we know about what the Special Council is looking at Michael Flynn and his son? For Oh, we haven't had anything that I've seen come directly from Mueller's office, but certainly based on what's been reported in the press over the last six months, I think we have a pretty good idea of what
it might be. Um. I think probably the most likely thing would be a charge related to his acting as UM an agent of the Turkish Turkish government without registering with the Department of Justice, as he's required to by federal law. If it's come out now that he has enough evidence to bring charges against Flynn, it can't be that, you know, this just suddenly happened. UM. One would think he's known that for a while, so it would appears he's making decisions about what order to charge people in
and for what. So we have these Manifort and Gates indictments and now we're finding out about Flynn. What what can you discern from all this about the way in which he's trying to play a strategy out in this investigation. Well, a number of people saw the distinction between the Manafort charges and then what happened with Papadopoulos as trying to
send a message to people in Flynn's shoes. And so Manafort had seemingly failed to cooperate with Mueller and he really got slammed in terms of the number of charges filed, and Mueller is seeking a lot of forfeiture from from Manafort, Uh Engates as well. Papa Appas, on the other hand, came off with, you know, just one charge and you know, we don't know anything about sentence exposure, but probably could
end up with very little, if any jail time. Perhaps, So a lot of people saw that as saying, you know, get on the right side of this, cooperate with with
Mueller's probe, and we will treat you fairly. And certainly, Michael flann is somebody who's been extremely close to Trump going way back on the campaign and then obviously served as his National security advisor seems like somebody who has a large amount of information, and so he would probably be precisely the type of person that Muller would be sending those signals to. Um, you know, cooperate and and you know, get some lesser charges or if not, we're
going to really throw the book at you. And that's Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University Law School, speaking with the Bloomberg's Michael Bass. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street Time here on Bloomberg Radio, and find more legal news at Bloomberg Law dot com. Attorneys will find exceptional legal research and business development tools there as well. Visit Bloomberg Law dot com for more information.