Das vadanya.

I would agree with your characterization as “exaggerated news.” This is a story that started as more of a joke on Twitter, as in people noticing and laughing at the rediculousness of the situation, rather than anyone thinking it represented a serious connection or a sign of anything worthy of further investigation, let alone outrage. Then a couple of media outlets took the joke entirely too far by seemingly treating it as a serious story rather than the trivial venting that it was.

There are, of course, plenty of other things to be outraged about, including the utter insufficiency of the plan Morgan Lewis has put together, and I’d personally still like to know why those many unlabeled folders nobody was allowed to get near sure seemed like they were full of blank paper.

The material in quotes in your comment renders only as question marks on my browser, but I am going to guess it was something in Cyrillic.

That said, mentioning this connection isn’t wholly frivolous. Morgan Lewis obviously does do a substantial amount of Russia-related business, perhaps more than any other major firm. Fred Fielding, who seems to me the most senior member of the team that wrote the white paper, did two presentations on the Russian sanctions in 2014. Lest it be unsaid, Fielding also has a long history of counseling Presidents, so there’s surely more reason to hire him than “Russia.”

This is another frustrating example of something that isn’t “fake news” but is more like “exaggerated news.” The real news here is that Trump’s conflict-of-interest plan sucks.