The claim that it was Russian disinformation (Russian-hacked emails placed on a random hard drive along with gigabytes of other tampered-with content, then pass

The claim that it was Russian disinformation (Russian-hacked emails placed on a random hard drive along with gigabytes of other tampered-with content, then passed along to friendly partisans who had literally distributed Russian-intelligence produced disinfo multiple times in the recent past) is entirely plausible, indeed more plausible than the story about the abandoned laptop. There is unfortunately not enough verifiable information about the sources and chain of custody of the hard drive to distinguish between these two alternatives. Various media sources (and the American public in general) were burned multiple times by credulously repeating Bannon- and Giuliani-pitched (completely made up) bullshit, some of which actually was later demonstrated to be Russian government produced disinformation. Even if the hard drive turned out to be what they said (again, this is still dubious), it would be a good example of a “boy who cried wolf” situation.