One man who has admitted to assaulting police officers as the U.S. Capitol riot raged on allegedly worked with a “cult deprogramming” expert to purge him of the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.”

Pennsylvania resident Robert Sanford Jr. pleaded guilty in September to assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers by lobbing a fire extinguisher at three Capitol Police officers while calling them traitors, even though they were only trying to diffuse the situation.

Andrew Stewart, an attorney for Sanford said that his client, who retired in 2020 after working as a firefighter for decades, has since gained “insight” into his motivations because he has worked with a cult expert after being arrested and detained, Newsweek reports. Stewart is urging leniency for Sanford, per court filings.

“In August 2022, [Sanford] began to work with an individual that specializes in cult deprogramming,” Stewart wrote. “Even after he was incarerated, he participated in regular discussions designed to challenge his ideology and belief structure, then help him understand how and why he developed the beliefs that led him to make the decisions that he did on January 6.”

“Mr. Sanford was confronted with facts about the ‘stolen election’ conspiracy theory among others and how psychological manipulation is used to indoctrinate the followers of a conspiray,” Stewart continued. “Mr. Sanford regrets his actions and is deeply sorry for his conduct.”

According to Stewart, Sanford had made a “trip down the proverbial conspiracy rabbit hole” with the aid of algorithm-equipped websites exposing him to “more and more extreme articles” that echoed his political beliefs at this time.

But in his meetings with the cult deprogrammer, Sanford learned that “mental health problems” and his “belief in a conspiracy” had increased his “isolation,” his attorney said.

Sanford was on hand for Donald Trump’s pre-riot rally at the Ellipse as the outgoing president spewed election lies, urging the crowd to “fight like hell” while Congress was readying to certify then-president-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Although Sanford faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison for the things he did as the riot surged, Stewart implored the court to impose a sentence of 12 months and a day in prison “in a facility close to his residence,” followed by a year of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

Stewart contends that a lighter sentence “along with continued participation in mental health counseling and cult deprogramming will continue to rehabilitate Mr. Sanford while also minimizing the likelihood of recidivism.”

Trump, as we all, unfortunately, are aware, is running for president again in 2024, even though he is now officially the first sitting or former U.S. president to be criminally indicted, and he is still pushing the false claim that he would have won the 2020 election if there wasn’t massive “election fraud.”

We all know this is completely ridiculous — Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes and defeated him in the Electoral College by 74 votes — definitely a decisive win.

It’s been 2 1/2 years since the election, and in that time Trump and his cronies have never ever produced any credible evidence that the evidence was rigged against him.

And the really sad thing is that all those who took part in the riot on January 6, 2021, could use such cult deprogramming experts to better understand where they went wrong. Especially since they went all out for a man who will never, ever care about them. Not really.

Trump only cared about winning at all costs. No matter who died or was injured along the way.