Former President Donald Trump's intent and motivations will play an essential role in the type of charges special counsel Jack Smith can bring against him in the Janaury 6 criminal investigation — as laid bare by his new meetings with Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks, asking them whether Trump truly believed he had had the election stolen from him.
Former GOP House counsel Sophia Nelson joined CNN on Thursday to break down her assessment of Trump's state of mind.
"I wonder, the fact that he is denying, or he may have believed he says — I see the face already turning," said anchor and former federal prosecutor Laura Coates. "You do not believe that? I take it. I see it. I receive it. But, legally speaking, what would be the consequence of him really believing that he won the election?"
"Look, you know this as a former prosecutor and I know this as an attorney: it goes to the state of mind, right?" said Nelson. "That is what he is trying to probe. Did he really believe this? Did he lose his mind? Because honestly, he would have had to not be in his right mind to believe that he won an election that he clearly lost, right?"
"Aides were telling him that he lost the election," Nelson continued. "You have texts from Fox personalities and others going back and forth on January 6 about, he needs to shut this down. You open with Cassidy Hutchinson in her testimony, which I think was devastating, right? And Mark Meadows and how they felt about the president's state of mind before January 6. And otherwise, Chris Christie has talked about it, right? Many times, on the campaign trail."
"I think there is no way that he believes that he won that election," added Nelson. "I think he decided he was going to take the election and overturn it. And if you really go back and look at Trump's rhetoric, starting as early as before the conventions of 2020, he was leading up to that. Well, I do not pledge to accept the results, I have to see. There was wishy-washiness. Giving a plausible deniability. Saying, I don't want to box myself in, like every other ordinary person who runs for president who says, yes, if I lose the election, I congratulate the other person and we do a transition and move forward."
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Sophia Nelson says Trump was "not in his right mind"www.youtube.com
