It never was a question about hacking this Farook guy's phone to get some info out of it; it is a well known fact that iphones can be corked when you can get the device in your hands and have some time to do it (few days to brute-force it)

It is not of concequence if that alleged phone really even exists, it is just used as a pretext to change legislation and force Apple to implement a backdoor to enable the spooks to have a fast method to uncork iphones; to enable them to do it so quick (or even by remote access) so that the owner never notices that he's been had...

That's typical terrorist tactics BTW; you get your way by scaring the hell out of your target audience.