Long story and a bit complicated, but at a high level, I had emails that might be used as evidence against a police department for negligence. They are being investigated in a wider investigation by the DOJ, I am just one of many victim testimonials.

I recently checked and somehow every email I had with that department is completely gone from my email. I’ve checked everywhere. Even emails when I forwarded the thread to someone are gone.

Few questions from a tech perspective -

Is it possible to locate these emails?

Is it possible that something nefarious happened - either my email was hacked or google worked with a law enforcement agency to grant access? Or am I being paranoid? I keep telling myself I probably deleted them by accident but it’s still freaking me out.

Could these emails be recovered if the DOJ was involved or are they just gone forever?