@lain dead or incapacitated, with legal corners cut due to the emergency, which they hoped to excuse after the fact when he got better, but he's not getting better and their first 'safer' attempt at AI fakery has scared them off of attempting the less-safe version.

If I were guilty of this I would push really hard on a worse theory, like "we have Joe Biden locked in a basement under guard because we wanted to coup him, and you'll only see him after we're satisfied that he's given up and will go with the plan", so that I could disprove it: haha, it's nothing actually, we just honorably lied for a bit to retain stability of government.