He's a cop, of course he knows how law enforcement will go through and find something incriminating

Recorded speech about engaging in crimes is often acceptable evidence. It’s probably the same with written messages.

I guess it’s up to the accused to prevent law enforcement from acquiring what they said, whether it be preventing recording, preventing police from sifting through mail or unsecure communications, or preventing police from acquiring the accused’s copy of potentially illegal communications. Which he is currently attempting.

I don’t blame him for trying, and would agree on a lesser extent that he is right to prevent self incriminating now. But copied communication as acceptable evidence is pretty settled in law by now.

I work in IT. Five bucks says their government-issued phones can be unlocked by an MDM (Mobile Device Management) profile.

Wow... I could dream up more realistic excuses in middle school.

6 digits is brute force hackable in about 1 second.

Also, isn't lying to the FBI another crime?

With a pipe wrench

You're right. But it's not his phone. It's his employer's phone.

I mean, this is an obvious lie.

But it's a smarter lie than Trump usually tells. Giving up your passcode is self incriminating, but a court can still compel you to do it. If you claim to have forgotten it, the court can't compel you to remember.

A Trumpian lie would be like "I never had a phone, and people said it was the best phone, better than Nokeeya, better than Obamaphone, nobody had ever seen a phone like it, people would come up to me and say, I've never seen a better phone. A perfect phone, they'd tell me, I don't know. The password, I shouldn't even tell you this, but it's so good, it's the name of a hooker I used to know in Atlantic City. She was, well, she was young and looked a lot like my daughter Ivanka, very smart woman, super smart, and sexy, smart though. Ivanka was smart, not Brandy, but she was very good too. She said I had the biggest hands of anybody, any hands, she'd ever seen. Brandy, not Ivanka said that, although Ivanka also says I have big hands. But no, to answer the question, I never touched Brandy, never even met her, she's not really my type, if you know what I mean. She's not a very good person, at least that's what they tell me, because I don't know, I never met her, bad person, bad."

He's an elected public servant. Regardless of whether or not we want to protect ourselves from prosecution, he's supposed to be accountable for his actions and he's deliberately spoiling the investigation.

No, not everyone. If I'm a public servant, I should be using work phones for work stuff. And I should expect any government-sanctioned investigation office to have access to it.

It would be a different thing if it was his personal phone. In that case, I could agree with you.

"Just say No"

Apple has a feature to restrict changing the passcode when not in a typical geolocation. This is to prevent thieves from shoulder-surfing your passcode in a bar and then snatching the phone and changing the code. If you're at home or at work (where the phone recognizes your typical behavior / location), it shouldn't activate. In a random location, it would. I don't know how well that works. It's a relatively recent feature (within a year or so, I think).