I wonder what model phone this was. Not an iPhone if it had an SD card, but some models lock users out for a period of time (the iPhone does) after a certain number of unsuccessful attempts.
That being said, there are many companies that specialize in this kind of stuff, and being a high profile case, I’d like to think (though maybe wrongly) that they’ve exhausted their options.
iirc the iPhone can also be set up to disable itself after 6 failed passcode attempts or reset itself after a certain number of failed pass code attempts ( I think 10).