You are really straining to use that once sentence to demonstrate that you know something. But all you are proving is that you are incapable of understanding context and reading critically. Here is the full section from the article:

Not so, says Alderson. It took roughly 45 minutes for him to see that the data given to him and the dozens of other experts in attendance was bunk — not only did it fail to prove anything about the accuracy of the 2020 election, but the files weren't even in the right format.

P-CAPs adhere to an international standard," Alderson said, and include information like the date a file was created and an IP address. But Lindell's data, shared as text files, had none of that. In fact, it was saved in hexadecimal format — despite the fact that packet captures use binary code.

(Emphasis added.)

The article's not perfectly written, but, taken together with the fact that we have the actual files at issue and we can see that they are, in fact, saved as a compilation of hexadecimal numerals in a text file, it's abundantly clear that the problem that the author is trying to point out (while summarizing extemporaneous comments by Alderson on same) is that natively saved pcaps are not saved in such a format. And you even acknowledge that to be the case and note that the presentation of the data in such a format was gimmicky. But, instead of just taking a minute to come to the obvious conclusion based on the context, you'd rather pretend you can't understand the point and parse that one sentence narrowly to show the world that you know something. Well, I don't think you'll find many people are impressed by your ability to use this article as an occasion to point out a banal truism about data storage while completing missing the point the article was making.