Here are some interesting excerpts...
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At The Post’s request, Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins University security researcher who specializes in cryptography, and Jake Williams, a forensics expert and former National Security Agency operative who once hacked the computers of foreign adversaries, separately examined two copies The Post made of the portable drive Maxey provided.
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The portable drive provided to The Post contains 286,000 individual user files, including documents, photos, videos and chat logs. Of those, Green and Williams concluded that nearly 22,000 emails among those files carried cryptographic signatures that could be verified using technology that would be difficult for even the most sophisticated hackers to fake.
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Many of the nearly 22,000 verified emails were routine messages, such as political newsletters, fundraising appeals, hotel receipts, news alerts, product ads, real estate listings and notifications related to his daughters’ schools or sports teams. There was also a large number of bank notifications, with about 1,200 emails from Wells Fargo alone.
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Other emails contained exchanges with Hunter Biden’s business partners, personal assistants or members of his family. Some of these emails appear to offer insights into deals he developed and money he was paid for business activities that opponents of his father’s bid for the presidency sought to make a campaign issue in 2020.
In particular, there are verified emails illuminating a deal Hunter Biden developed with a fast-growing Chinese energy conglomerate, CEFC China Energy, for which he was paid nearly $5 million, and other business relationships. Those business dealings are the subject of a separate Washington Post story published at the same time as this one on the forensic examinations of the drive.
The drive also includes some verified emails from Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company for which he was a board member. President Donald Trump’s efforts to tie Joe Biden to the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma led to Trump’s first impeachment trial, which ended in acquittal in February 2020.
The Post’s review of these emails found that most were routine communications that provided little new insight into Hunter Biden’s work for the company.
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In their examinations, Green and Williams found evidence that PEOPLE OTHER THAN HUNTER BIDEN 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. (emphasis mine).
Maxey had alerted The Washington Post to this issue in advance, saying that others had accessed the data to examine its contents and make copies of files. But the lack of what experts call a “CLEAN CHAIN OF CUSTODY" undermined Green’s and Williams’s ability to determine the authenticity of most of the drive’s contents. (emphasis mine)
“The drive is a mess,” Green said.
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“FROM A FORENSICS STANDPOINT, IT'S A DISASTER," Williams said. (The Post is paying Williams for the professional services he provided. Green declined payment.) (emphasis mine)
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IMO these comments help to explain why not much progress has been made on this investigation.
Note: Everyone who views this post should bookmark it, so that these insights don't need to be repeated.
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/