They have acknowledged that some of the data on it is quite real, and were able to verify many emails. As your link confirms, they also found that folders with names like "Biden Burisma" and "Salacious Pics Package" were added in September 2020...

There is nothing I can see in that NYT article that mentions those folder names and consequently that they were added in September 2020

My bad, it was the WP that did the verification and pointed out both the verifiability of the emails and obvious evidence of planted content https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...

Even within that article it states that those folders were created after the story broke and the drive was in FBI custody.

That would indicate to me that someone in the FBI likely created folders to pull files into associated with those topics accidentally on the drive rather than on another storage location.

I guess it's theoretically possible that labelling evidence "Salacious pics package" is a critical part of FBI investigative procedure they accidentally exposed to the press, if you want to believe enough.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the political organization that actually provided the copy of the drive to the media and whose electoral messaging around the emails the folders happened to perfectly align with might have had a little more to do with it...

I don’t necessarily disagree that whoever had access to that drive after it landed at the FBI could have had a political ax to grind. It’s pretty apparent over the last 7 years that there is some highly politicized factions within the FBI. However, it’s definitely hard to sell the “it’s manufactured Russian disinformation” because of folders that were created after it reached the FBI and after the contents of the drive were made public to the media.

Frankly I think the most damning stuff is the emails that were DKIM verified anyway.

Exactly, it’s like we didn’t need the Mueller investigation to prove that Donald Trump colluded with Russia - he called on them to find dirt on his opponents publicly.