Washington Post Investigation Into Hunter Biden’s Laptop Found Problems With Determining Authenticity of Hard Drive

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Washington Post reported on the assessments they received from two tech security experts they hired to conduct a review on Hunter Biden‘s laptop. The results were a mixed bag, however, due to a combination of damaged internal data and indications that the laptop’s contents were messed with by people other than Biden.

In a review the Post released on Tuesday, the paper explained that after looking through copies of Biden’s hard drive, security researcher Matt Green and forensics expert Jake Williams were able to authenticate thousands of emailed communications from the abandoned MacBook. Many of these emails were described as “routine messages” from several unsuspicious places, though the review did verify Biden’s emailed correspondence with his business partners, emails pertaining to his work with Burisma, and his $5 million business dealings with a Chinese energy company.

While the emails give peripheral support to the recurring public concerns tied to President Joe Biden‘s son, the Post says the emails “provided little new insight into Biden’s work for the company.” On top of that, Green and Williams couldn’t verify a significant chunk of data from the laptop because of “sloppy handling of the data, which damaged some records.”

From the report:

The experts found the data had been repeatedly accessed and copied by people other than Biden over nearly three years. The MacBook itself is now in the hands of the FBI, which is investigating whether Biden properly reported income from business dealings.

Most of the data obtained by The Post lacks cryptographic features that would help experts make a reliable determination of authenticity, especially in a case where the original computer and its hard drive are not available for forensic examination. Other factors, such as emails that were only partially downloaded, also stymied the security experts’ efforts to verify content.

The Post goes on to report that Jack Maxey, the Republican activist who provided the data drives, disclosed upfront that “others had accessed the data to examine its contents and make copies of files.” Green and Williams separately determined that aside from Biden, other people “had accessed the drive and written files to it, both before and after the initial stories in the New York Post and long after the laptop itself had been turned over to the FBI.”

This lack of a “clean chain of custody” didn’t bode well for their ability to authenticate the computer contents.

“The drive is a mess,” Green said.

He compared the portable drive he received from The Post to a crime scene in which detectives arrive to find Big Mac wrappers carelessly left behind by police officers who were there before them, contaminating the evidence.

That assessment was echoed by Williams.

“From a forensics standpoint, it’s a disaster,” Williams said. (The Post is paying Williams for the professional services he provided. Green declined payment.)

Green and Williams didn’t report any evidence suggesting Biden’s emails or files were tampered with, but the Post had the caveat “neither was able to rule out that possibility.” The report goes on with a breakdown of their methodologies to analyze the drive data and authenticate cryptographic signatures where possible.