“This was someone lost,“ attorney Ron Lowy told Anderson Cooper on CNN Friday.

He said Sayoc was “abandoned by his father” and was desperately seeking an identity. He “was looking for anything and he found a father in Trump,” said Lowy. Sayoc had never been politically active until Trump’s campaign for the presidency, said Lowy, who represented Sayoc in the past on various criminal charges.

It’s “my opinion that he was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out, Trump reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don’t fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them they have a place at the table, telling them that it’s okay to get angry,” said Lowy. “I believe that was a motivating factor.”