“NYPD made a copy of the entire hard drive.”
I’ve always heard that’s the very first thing cops do when a computer is taken into evidence. Copy the hard drive, then research and work from the copy. So they gave the laptop to the crooks in Deep State. Who has the copy? Rudy, maybe? I understand the NYPD still has great loyalty to Rudy.
I don’t do forensics, but this makes sense to me, as a possible procedure. You don’t want to do anything to tamper with the original hard drive, and you definitely don’t want to boot the OS and run software, because just operating it can change the data structure and what remains. So you explore the data on a mirrored hard drive, and keep the original, because there are ways to inspect the original for data that has been overwritten, physically (can’t be done on a mirror).
But you are assuming that they did this.
Would you really be surprised if they didn’t nudge and wink at each other every step along the way. IE, and thing that can accidentally sabotage evidence potentially harmful to the former NY Senator...