I'm pretty sure what's being alleged is that there is real data exfiltrated from his devices on the laptop, but the laptop itself wasn't his. As in he was hacked, someone created the laptop with that data and added manipulations to it, then coincidently dropped it off to be "found".
Given the lack of proper chain of custody, it's probably likely.
That reminds me, I need to book a flight from here on the west coast to go get my laptop fixed at some obscure shop in N.J. Damn, I wish someone out here was blind enough to fix laptops.
Nope, the allegation is that they had his laptop, but they modified some content in his harddisk to make it look like he put it there. The laptop itself isn't in question, some of the content is.
In the lawsuit, Biden does not concede that the laptop was his, but he does acknowledge that at least “some of the data that Defendants obtained, copied, and proceeded to hack into and tamper with belongs” to him. The lawsuit charges that Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged before it was copied and sent” to Giuliani and Costello.
He specifically says some of his private data was hacked, he's not saying the laptop they had was his, just they definitely had his private data.
As someone who runs a shop much like the one claiming to have been used by Hunter, when people leave their devices we don't get to do whatever we want with their data.
No doubt. I'm not saying anything in support of the guys who capitalized on the laptop. I'm just talking about how you can even forget you dropped off a laptop for service. May be its because I don't have the fuck you money he probably has, but it's mind boggling to me.
Tbh I still don't understand how people can leave their shit but we've got shelves full of devices we've fixed and no one answers the call to pick it up. There's a laptop sitting on the shelf that's been here longer than me and I've met the customer multiple times they just always say "I'll be back in a couple weeks for it."