In an interview with Anderson Cooper, New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman says associates of former President Donald Trump are telling her he is feeling disheartened and discouraged about running for president again now that he is the subject of a massive fraud case in New York.

On Wednesday evening’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper asked Haberman what effect the fraud suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James may be having on Trump’s political ambitions.

Haberman, who is also a CNN analyst, said his colleagues have told her his “heart is not in” politics or campaigning but also added she doesn’t know if he’d be willing to forego the attention — or the fundraising.

At one point Cooper asked her:

“Maggie, obviously, this is not the only bad legal news the former President got today. What impact, if any, do you think this would have, or do you think it would have any decision on whether or not he would run again?”

Haberman wasted little time in getting to the point.

“Yes. I mean look, Anderson, I think that you can look at this in two different ways. Number one, a lot of people have talked to the former president say they don’t think his heart seems to be in politics and running and campaigning the way it once was, that having been said. The second he says that he is not running, he loses a lot of attention.”

“He loses the same ability to fundraise, politically, and he loses potentially, if he were to run the protections that the office affords a sitting president in terms of investigations, and all of that is something he is aware of.”

But there is one small difference here, and it’s helped diffuse some of the tension, Haberman noted.

“I think that, you know, the people I have spoken to close to him were very relieved, still, as they have been over and over that there was no criminal charge related here,” she said. “There was a criminal referral that was discussed, but this is a civil action and I think that you’re going to see them fight it on the same grounds that you have seen quite a lot.”

“I will say, there were a couple of very new details related to Trump’s financial habits in this filing and there were — you know, there were certainly a lot of descriptions that the Attorney General used of his practices.

“She put together a comprehensive filing, a lot of it, and that this is what the Trump folks are pointing to repeatedly. It is stuff that has largely been known. The question is going to be whether it gets heard differently in court this time.”

I hope Trump is sweating this one out. He could have accomplished many things as president but he chose to turn the highest office in the land into a circus of conmen and grifters and reawakened this country’s uglier elements of racism and xenophobia. He could have kept everything honest and on the table but he chose not to do that.

He’s reaping what he sowed.

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