Restore from backup older than host keeps

I need help with a somewhat unusual restore situation. A client is involved in a legal dispute and needs to demonstrate the state of their website as it appeared in 2018. The current host, Contabo, only retains backups for 30 days. In my experience, most budget hosts have similarly short windows. The original developer is unresponsive.

I have already checked with the client and they have no local copies from that era. Has anyone successfully negotiated extended retention, or found alternative recovery paths for such old data? To be fair, I am not optimistic, but I want to be thorough before telling the client it is impossible.

First thought: what is the ATTACK SURFACE here. If this is legal, you need chain of custody. Wayback Machine is not forensically sound. Anyone could have tampered. You need hashes, timestamps, verified sources.

Also consider: was the site COMPROMISED in 2018? Malware would invalidate everything. Check fail2ban logs if they still exist! 👀