Thread by @dsamuelsohn

NEW: John Eastman was as an unorthodox constitutional scholar who gained a foothold in Trump's orbit b/c he could put the gloss of a former SCOTUS clerk onto unorthodox legal theories concocted to validate the POTUS's whims & desires. by @cryanbarber ($) businessinsider.com/john-eastman-t…

That's according to people familiar w/ Eastman's work. Said one ex-Trump admin official: "The president had a retinue of outside people who he constantly talked to and told him what he wanted to hear. And he was definitely in that group."

"There were many situations where, when the president wasn't being told by his people, his own people, what he wanted to hear, he would just get on the phone with this group — people like Jenna Ellis, and John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani, and those types," the ex-official added.

Like Rudy and others, Eastman found himself in hot water over his work for Trump. He agreed to retire from his job at the private school in conservative Orange County a week after the deadly Capitol riot amid a backlash from students & faculty upset over his work for Trump.

Before Election Day '20, Eastman had fueled Trump's flirtation w/ an EO to end birthright citizenship. Eastman has long disputed the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to people born in the US, and he "kept getting the president jacked up" on the issue, per the ex-admin aide.

The former administration official added that Eastman "was able to tell him stuff and he would take it to the bank" and frequently second-guess advisors within the Trump administration.

Eastman defends his Trump work & said he had no regrets in spite of public backlash & professional repercussions: "We live in a time where defending the original meaning of the Constitution has become controversial, but I've been fairly consistent on that throughout my life,"

"I think where the real controversy ought to be, are those that say we don't have to live by the Constitution that was written, or as it was originally understood, and that means it's make-it-up-as -you-go," he told @cryanbarber in an interview Thursday.

Eastman caught Trump's attention w/ a law review article — essentially a reprint of congressional testimony Eastman delivered in 2005 — titled "Born in the U.S.A.? Rethinking Birthright Citizenship in the Wake of 9/11." scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewconten…

It helped land him an audience with the most powerful man on the planet. In 2019, Eastman flew across the country for an Oval Office meeting with Trump, White House lawyers and the then-president's chief immigration advisor, Stephen Miller.

An hour into the meeting, a secretary knocked on the door to say Giuliani was there. "'No, no, tell him I'm busy,'" Trump said, per Eastman. Then POTUS said, "'No, tell him to get in here, he needs to listen to this guy.'" Rudy entered. "It was very funny," Eastman said.

The former Trump official said Eastman had influence with the president, explaining that he "was able to tell him stuff and he would take it to the bank" and frequently second-guess advisors within his own administration.

Eastman said he wasn't trying to "accommodate the policy goals of the president," adding: "No, I don't pull out pretzels and distort my views on this stuff. I get the assessment as accurately as I can, consistent with the original meaning of the Constitution."

Eastman told @thisisinsider that he sees himself as a victim of bias against conservatives in academia. "If I had been asked to file a brief five or eight years earlier on behalf of Obama, they'd have thrown a ticker-tape parade for me."

Eastman: "So what's really driving this is this derangement of this anti-Trump thing, the false narrative put out about, 'He's authoritarian and ignoring his constitutional authority.'"

Of Trump, Eastman added: "He did a better job at staying within the constitutional lines than either of his two predecessors did."

Anthony Caso, a law professor at Chapman University, told Insider that he sympathized with Eastman, whom he described as "probably the premier scholar on the original public understanding of the Constitution."

Caso said he had not read Eastman's two-page memo to Pence that came to light through the Woodward-Costa book. The two remain colleagues through their roles at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in Southern California where Eastman remains a senior fellow.

Caso: "I understand the undergraduate faculty decided they did not like his opinion & wanted him out but the administration was not swayed by the undergraduate faculty's abandonment of academic freedom & free speech."

Eastman during 2020 wrote an op-ed questioning the eligibility of Kamala Harris to serve as vice president. Eastman based his argument on the contention that neither of Harris' parents were naturalized citizens at the time of her birth in the US in 1964.

Newsweek added an editor's note saying it was intended to "explore a minority legal argument" & acknowledged it "inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American." newsweek.com/some-questions…

In response to the op-ed, the Cato Institute said Eastman had long questioned birthright citizenship and described him as "frequently the only constitutional lawyer on any panel or symposium who believes that birthright citizenship isn't guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Lots more in this great @cryanbarber story on John Eastman, including what he says are lots of "very high-profile things underway." Check it out w/ a @thisisinsider subscription by signing up from here: businessinsider.com/john-eastman-t…