The laptop lacked a clean
chain of custody, and was considered a mess from a forensic standpoint by analysts.
[6] The drive contained emails marked to and from Hunter Biden
[2] and other digital files relating to him. PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that it is possible that "copies of a laptop" were obtained, instead of Hunter Biden's actual laptop.
[5] The New York Times and
The Washington Post reported that their sources had authenticated a number of emails, including one that was the subject of the
New York Post reporting.
[7][6] No more than 22,000 of the almost 129,000 emails on the hard drive were confirmed as authentic in 2022 by two forensic analysts who independently examined the data for
The Washington Post; however, the analysts could not verify the vast majority of the data.
The unverifiable emails included some prominently reported previously by other news outlets.[6] The analysis found that people other than Biden had written files and folders to the drive before and after the original report by the New York Post, but only after it had been taken into FBI custody. It also found that data had been accessed and copied off the drive by people other than Biden over nearly three years.[6] Despite extensive scrutiny of the laptop contents by multiple parties, by September 2022 no clear evidence of criminal activity by the Bidens had surfaced.[8]