...Under the law, an item will not be accepted as evidence during the trial—will not be seen by the jury—unless the chain of custody is an unbroken and fully documented trail without gaps or discrepancies. In order to convict a defendant of a crime, the evidence against them must have been handled in a meticulously careful manner to prevent tampering or contamination.(Emphasis mine.)
As I mentioned before, I was the senior Art Director at the Criminal Justice Institute, 6001 Cass Ave, Detroit MI, designing the training programs to teach judges, AG's, and all responsible investigators in the Criminal Justice genre how to implement and maintain Chain of Custody for all judicial proceedings. I don't know what you think you know - but I taught whoever it was that gave you the pieces of info you posted snippets from. Mac Issac had an unbroken Chain of Custody. It does not have any gaps or discrepancies, except for bogus innuendoes by court flunkies who should know better. When a firefighter throws a melted plastic milk bottle of leftover gasoline out the window of an arson scene to protect the personnel at the scene, it breaks the chain of custody when it is left unsupervised outside. As long as the item is under supervision or under lock and key - which the lap top was - it fulfills all aspects of Chain of Custody. When one supervisor hands an item into another's keeping a signed affidavit goes with it, maintained thereafter by the Criminal Justice organization that received it.
What you misperceive is that the untrue chatter that Russia spoofed the laptop was ever a legal finding. The FBI has announced the laptop is real. They knew it from the onset. There never was any doubt of an unbroken and fully documented trail without gaps or discrepancies. The discrepancies came from evildoers trying to game the system.
I think I see the confusion that is causing our disagreement here.
In a technical sense, you could say that there is a Chain of Custody. From when Hunter dropped off the laptop (assuming that is was Hunter who did so), we know who had possession of the laptop until the present time. That would be a Chain of Custody.
However, you seen to be ignoring my highlighted part in the quote. Although we know
who had it at any given time, it was not held in "a meticulously careful manner to prevent tampering or contamination" the entire time. Which means that while it was in a "chain of custody," it does not rise to the legal definition of a Chain of Custody.
Let me give you an example.
You go to a pool and give your wallet to an attendant at that pool. He puts it into a cubby hole to hold it while you swim.
While you are swimming, the police come in with a warrant. Child pornography has been reported in the pool, and they have come to search the premises. They search your wallet (since it is on the premises--let's not worry if it's legal or not, this is just an example

), and discover a child porn photo folder up in it. The police immediately take custody of it, and you.

Now, you have to admit that the Chain of Custody was never broken. You handed it the attendant; he put it in the cubby hole behind him; the attendant never left the area; the police took it out of the cubby hole. At every given moment, it is known who had control of your wallet.
But--and this is the important thing--
you cannot infer that your wallet was not tampered with. Because the pool attendant could have slipped that photo into your wallet while he was alone at the desk, perhaps because he heard the police coming. (Why do you think the police got the warrant in the first place?

) This is because one of the persons who had control of your wallet was not trustworthy.
You keep saying that the laptop could not have been tampered with because there was an unbroken Chain of Custody. But we don't know how trustworthy the computer repairman is. And we don't know how securely he kept that laptop. For these reasons, while there is a "chain of custody," it does not reach the legal standard of a Chain of Custody of evidence that could not have been tampered with.
Do you understand my point? Or do you think you should be put on the sexual predator list for the rest of your life in the example above?
