That was their Plan A.
The literally couldn't imagine any company operating in the United States would dare defy them.
When Apple didn't act like a good little Kapo *cough* soros *cough* they were stuck.
The rule of thumb for a lawyer in court is never ask a question you don't know the answer to.
The FBI assumed Apple would say 'yassa massa', or else. No muss, no fuss, and the FBI gets a back-door adaptable to any iPhone.
They were wrong.
I guess I have a hard time believeing that they didn’t know what Apple would do, that doesn’t make sense to me. Just call them up and ask. If the whole point is to have a cover story to explain in court having the stuff they actually got illegally or whatever, why didn’t they then just say, ‘OK, we’ll use this other company to explain how we got it.’ It might not even make the news cycle that way. Of course I could absolutely be wrong.
The whole thing being drawn out in public is weird. If it was supposedly this darn easy to do without Apple, what could have been the reason not to just do that first? I mean how long was the court case going to draw out?
Freegards