A copy of the laptop hard drive was provided to The Post by Jack Maxey, an activist who received a copy from Rudy Giuliani in 2020, at a time when Maxey was working with Stephen K. Bannon and his “War Room” podcast. Two security experts who did a
forensic analysis of the data at the request of The Post were able to verify a portion of the emails as authentic communications. The emails cited in this report were either verified by the analysts or recently corroborated by a person familiar with the communications.
After articles surfaced in the New York Post in October 2020, The Washington Post had requested a copy of the material to independently assess — repeatedly asking Giuliani and Bannon for a copy of the data to review before the election — but the requests were rebuffed or ignored. The Washington Post
wrote about the New York Post articles at the time and, in March, began publishing reports based on its own review of the data.