“We tried 0000. Tony, write up a press release about how incredible we are at our job and how we spent 400% of our usual overtime on it and send it to the tech press. Make sure they mention we need to triple next year’s budget for security and shit.”
to be fair to the incompetent people in law enforcement, I do believe “trying to kill a presidential candidate slated to win and being a millimeter away from getting it done” would justify relying on a 0-day.