This sounds terribly amateurish, and even unfair.<p>I have a hard time believing that the 40-50 other software forensics experts didn't recognise ASCII in hex, or bother converting these files even if they didn't.<p>If I understand correctly, he only analysed a tiny proportion of the data. Junk or not, it doesn't disprove that the remaining majority held key evidence.<p>He "determined that nothing in the file was related to the 2020 presidential election". What is "determined" here?<p>It sounds like this was more of a gaming of the system than it was a forensic investigation. There must be an awful lot missing here.<p>Edit:<p>Having read the full report now, I am of the opinion that this was a(n attempted) fraudulent competition by a wealthy moron, exploited by an unscrupulous parasite with the good fortune of misleading arbitrators into a skewed perception of the competition terms that guaranteed his success. Both of them acted disgracefully; this should have been a criminal matter dealing with the fraud, and the other hack shouldn't have a dime to show for it.