I believe it was speculation based on them saying they wanted e2ee (and now it's available IIRC).
It honestly seems to me like they thought they could negotiate a middle ground without pissing off the Feds or the customers, but they maneuvered it quite badly.
Oh cool, didn't know that. It's this new "advanced data protection" feature that makes everything in iCloud e2ee except the classic mail/contacts/calendars combo that wouldn't really work with that. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 is a nice resource on this, and I wish more companies would publish things like this.
It honestly seems to me like they thought they could negotiate a middle ground without pissing off the Feds or the customers, but they maneuvered it quite badly.