A very wonky point abt the LAT story on the warrant for Richard Burr's phone.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-05-13/fbi-serves-warrant-on-senator-stock-investigation

The story says FBI already accessed Burr's iCloud account, and used information from that to get the warrant to seize his phone.

A very common step in FBI investigations these days is to figure out what apps someone has downloaded from the Apple or Google Store, and then use that in affidavits to access material implicating those apps that would only be on the phone.

This is how the FBI gets encrypted communications. They show:

1) Downloaded SIgnal (or WhatsApp or whatever)
2) PRTT showing WhatsApp or Signal texts to someone interesting. (No, no one has explained how that PRTT works.)
3) Seize the phone to get the texts!

We don't know that's what happened, but it is very common these days.

But IF THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED it means that the guy whose been campaigning against encrypted apps for us all this time may have been using them.