San Bernardino: Behind the Scenes

Context -- enough to make me interested in this post:

"About Me" https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?page_id=202

"I wasn’t originally going to dig into some of the ugly details about San Bernardino, but with FBI Director Comey’s latest actions to publicly embarrass Hillary Clinton (who I don’t support), or to possibly tip the election towards Donald Trump (who I also don’t support), I am getting to learn more about James Comey and from what I’ve learned, a pattern of pushing a private agenda seems to be emerging. This is relevant because the San Bernardino iPhone matter saw numerous accusations of pushing a private agenda by Comey as well; that it was a power grab for the bureau and an attempt to get a court precedent to force private business to backdoor encryption, while lying to the public and possibly misleading the courts under the guise of terrorism...

"The reason I bring this up is that Comey’s public facing story was that “anyone with an idea” can come to the FBI and help them out, and it made the FBI sound reasonable to the general public. This clearly wasn’t true, and what was going on behind the scenes was quite the opposite. I’m not some crazy anon either approaching FBI with some crack pot solution; I had a working relationship with them, and had assisted them many times before, usually pro-bono (as I did with many other agencies). The people knew me and had a mutual professional level of trust you would expect in cases such as this.

"Comey’s public story about exhausting all due diligence with the SB iPhone was entirely false, and when he told both the courts and Congress this, he made a false statement. The FBI pushed hard over the next month for a court precedent, in spite of turning away help. When it became evident that the FBI wasn’t going to win this case in court, suddenly a solution from out of nowhere manifested. We paid a million dollars of our tax money for an unlock that FBI could have done for about $100 with the right equipment."

TL;DR: If you weren't already convinced FBI Director Comey is a political weasel (and is there anyone anywhere on the spectrum of US political positions who isn't convinced after the last two events?) and the FBI as a whole is suspect, here's hard specifics on the handling and posturing WRT to the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.