Things get philosophical rather quickly I'm afraid.
If I misconfigure an FTP server, and you download some MIT code that I stripped the copyrights from, does that count as redistribution?
But you cant make that argument here, as its a public repo, as such Microsoft did have the intent to redistribute.
Your argument is that a misconfigured FTP server isn't intent to distribute.
What if this was a misconfigured fork that was meant to be private but was set public? Not intent to distribute either.
There’s a whole philosophical debate we can have where we quibble over the definitions of words as they deal with technology, but the (US) courts generally don’t care about technicalities. An analogy is stolen property. If you purchase something that is stolen property, you have (almost) no legal right to it; the courts will often order its seizure for return to the original owner. By “hacking” (according to the CFAA), you “stole” the EXE.