The author of a new book about Antonin Scalia says the late Supreme Court justice was fascinated by then-candidate Donald Trump Donald John TrumpObama calls on Senate not to fill Ginsburg's vacancy until after election Planned Parenthood: 'The fate of our rights' depends on Ginsburg replacement Progressive group to spend M in ad campaign on Supreme Court vacancy MORE’s outspokenness during the 2016 presidential election.

“Justice Scalia thought it was most refreshing to have a candidate who was pretty much unfiltered and utterly frank,” Bryan Garner, a legal dictionary editor, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday.

“[H]e was fascinated by the fact that Trump was so outspoken in an unfiltered way, and therefore we were seeing something a little more genuine than a candidate whose every utterance is airbrushed,” Garner added.

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The interview comes one day before the release Garner's new book, “Nino and Me,” in which he recounts his long friendship with Scalia.

Despite Scalia's initial intrigue with the business mogul, Garner would not speculate about what he might think about the president's time in office.

“These [were] early days in the campaign. It shouldn’t be looked at through the lens of everything that’s happened since,” Garner said.

Garner traveled throughout Asia with Scalia for two weeks in 2016, just before the jurist died in February of that year.

Trump's promise to nominate a successor to the bench who was “very much in the mold of Justice Scalia,” helped the Republican candidate gain support from the conservative justice's base, including those who opposed abortion and same-sex marriage.