https://davidlat.substack.com/p/trump-derangement-syndrome-4-leading
Here is an interesting essay on how and why several prominent elite lawyers beclowned themselves and essentially destroyed their careers and reputations by promoting Trump's lies about the 2020 election (and in some cases developing their own outlandish theories on the subject).
The author knows the world of elite law better than almost anyone else so he may well be closer to the truth and I or other commentators, I will have note 2 caveats here.
While highly educated elites can and do sometimes fall prey to ridiculous conspiracy theories (as happened here), on average belief in such theories is inversely correlated with education and political knowleedge.
I don't know Clark, Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but I have followed John Eastman for many years. As his appearances at organizations like AALS and APSA testify (both are academic organizations dominated by left of center people), he was a well-accepted member of the mainstream academic establishment, even though close to its right-most edge.
The author may be right that Eastman acted as he did in the election crisis in part because of love of attention (a trait shared by many legal academics), I think 2 other factors probably mattered more:
John is a deeply committed immigration restrictionist and has been for a long time. This is reflected in much of his record, including his rejection of birthright citizenship (a minority stance even among conservative legal academics), and his claim that Kamala Harris was not a "natural born" citizen eligible for the VP position (even the Trump campaign ultimately chose not to push this idea). This commitment made him sympathetic to Trump's cause on what was the central defining issue of the latter's 2016 campaign. It has no direct connection to the 2020 election controversy. But lots of evidence shows we are more willing to make excuses for leaders whose cause we strongly support.
He also has a long history of being very strong Republican partisan, both in the sense of supporting the party and in the "negative partisanship" sense of deep antipathy to its opponents (liberal Democrats). Unusually for an academic, Eastman even left his position as Dean of a law school to run for office. He lost the GOP primary. Such strong partisanship is correlated with willingness to embrace outlandish ideas and conspiracy theories about the opposition. Survey data shows it is correlated such things as Obama "birtherism" on the right, and 9/11 "trutherism" on the left. This partisanship alsoo helps explain why the positions Eastman adopted on the 2020 election were, on key issues, diametrically the opposite of what he argued during the dispute over the 2000 election. In each case, he took the position favourable to thee GOP candidate at the time.
I could well be wrong. But I think it is the combination of these 2 factors that led Eastman to do what he did, more than anything else.