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How Jared Kushner Washed His Hands of Donald Trump Before Jan. 6

"Takeaways: Trump’s mind ‘made up’ on fraud ahead of Jan. 6"

Mr. Kushner’s role in the final months of the Trump White House could come into sharp relief once the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol opens hearings.


Jared Kushner’s decision to withdraw from the most consequential moment of the Trump presidency left few effective counterweights to
plotters looking to subvert the 2020 election. Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Peter Baker
Published June 8, 2022Updated June 9, 2022

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, barely 24 hours after President Donald J. Trump claimed in the middle of the night that “frankly, we did win this election,” Jared Kushner woke up in his Kalorama mansion and announced to his wife that it was time to leave Washington. “We’re moving to Miami,” he said.

The election had not even been called for Joseph R. Biden Jr., but as Mr. Kushner later told the story to aides and associates, the White House’s young power couple felt no need to wait for the official results. They saw which way the votes were going and understood that, barring some unforeseen surprise, the president had lost his bid for a second term. Even if he refused to accept it himself.

No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen, according to people close to them. While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.

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Mr. Kushner’s activities in his final months in the White House are now also coming under the scrutiny of another Democratic-run House committee investigating whether he used his position to secure a $2 billion investment in his new private equity firm from a prominent Saudi Arabian wealth fund. Mr. Kushner has said he abided by all legal and ethical guidelines while in public service.

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To Mr. Kushner, his father-in-law’s decision to turn once again to Mr. Giuliani was a red flag. As far as Mr. Kushner was concerned, Mr. Giuliani was an erratic schemer who had already gotten Mr. Trump impeached once because of his political intriguing in Ukraine, and nothing good would come of the former mayor’s involvement in fighting the election results. But instead of fighting Mr. Giuliani for Mr. Trump’s attention, Mr. Kushner opted out entirely, deciding it was time to focus on his own future, one that would no longer involve the White House.

He and Ms. Trump began making plans. They quickly ruled out returning to New York. Like Mr. Trump, who had officially become a Florida resident in 2019, they had soured on their former home just as it had soured on them. Miami, on the other hand, seemed exciting and new.

While Mr. Trump huddled with Mr. Giuliani and others telling him that he could still win, Mr. Kushner and his wife began thinking about where they would live, what schools they could send their three children to and what business ventures they would pursue. They had to be discreet about it. The last thing they wanted to do was make it look as if they were moving on because that would produce headlines embarrassing to Mr. Trump. Indeed, Ivanka Trump would text her father’s top advisers that same day just after the election and prod them to “Keep the faith and the fight!”

But she and Mr. Kushner were soon scouting properties in Florida, and within weeks they were buying a $32 million lot formerly owned by the Spanish singer Julio Iglesias on the private island of Indian Creek near Miami, an exclusive haven for a couple dozen wealthy families that tabloids called the “Billionaire’s Bunker.”

In what remaining time he had in the White House, Mr. Kushner wanted to focus on expanding the Abraham Accords, the agreement establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, an achievement that he felt validated his whole time in Washington. Two other countries, Morocco and Sudan, signed on to the accords during the period between the election and Mr. Biden’s inauguration.

As his father-in-law refused to authorize transition cooperation with Mr. Biden’s incoming team, Mr. Kushner quietly began working with aides to the president-elect like Jake Sullivan and Jeffrey Zients to prepare for their takeover. And although Mr. Trump might not have been thinking about his legacy yet, Mr. Kushner was.

While still in the White House, he began writing a memoir focused on Middle East peacemaking. In the weeks to come, as Mr. Trump would continue to insist that he would remain for a second term, Mr. Kushner set about chronicling the first. He even took an online MasterClass on how to write a book, taught by the prolific best-selling novelist James Patterson. In the course of a two-week stretch after the election, he secretly batted out 40,000 words of a first draft. The final version is set to be published in August.


While Mr. Kushner was often called a shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was encouraging the conspiracy
theorists seeking to overturn the election. Doug Mills/The New York Times

A Coming Collision

The postelection fraud claims quickly exposed a rift within the Trump family. On the same day Mr. Kushner woke up to declare it was time to move to Miami, his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. was already pushing the president’s team to fight to stay in power. He sent a text to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, outlining a plan to override the verdict of the voters by having Republican legislatures in states won by Mr. Biden invalidate the results and send Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump when Congress counted them on Jan. 6.

How much Mr. Kushner knew about that at the time remains unclear, but he did not express serious concern about how far the effort to hang on to power would go. He sent word to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, that Mr. Trump would eventually accept the reality that he lost.

“We’ll get through it, bear with us,” Mr. Kushner told Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and campaign manager for Mr. McConnell who would pass along the message. “We’ve got a couple of challenges that have some merit, we’ll see how they go, but there’s a pretty good chance we come up short.” And once the Electoral College voted on Dec. 14, he suggested, that would be the end of it. Mr. Trump just needed time to come to terms with his defeat.

While Mr. Kushner was often called the president’s shadow chief of staff, the man who held the actual title, Mr. Meadows, was actively encouraging the conspiracy theorists seeking to overturn the election, acting less as a gatekeeper than a door opener, letting practically anybody who wanted to come into the Oval Office.

Among them were lawyers and others arguing that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally stop Mr. Biden from being formally recognized as the winner in his role overseeing the counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress. Mr. Pence concluded he had no such power and it would be unconstitutional for him to do so, but that did not stop Mr. Trump from keeping up the pressure.

Finally, seeing the collision that was coming, Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff, tried to enlist help from Mr. Kushner, calling him over the holidays to ask him to get his father-in-law to stand down. “Look, can you help us with this?” Mr. Short asked.


Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Jared Kushner in Doha, Qatar, in December 2020. Leading up to Jan. 6, 2021,
Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar News Agency/EPA,
via Shutterstock

But Mr. Kushner brushed him off. “Look, when Rudy got involved, I stopped being involved,” he told Mr. Short. The vice president “is a big boy,” and if he disagreed with the president on a legal issue, he should bring in his lawyers. “I’m too busy working on Middle East peace right now, Marc.”

Indeed, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Mr. Kushner was in the Middle East brokering a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar to end a three-year blockade of the small Gulf state. He was on a plane back to Washington when Mr. Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings

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An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

Strong arming the Justice Department. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, ??a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.

After arriving home in the afternoon, Mr. Kushner was in the bathroom with the shower already running and about to jump in when his phone rang. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican minority leader, was on the line asking Mr. Kushner to persuade the president to do something. “We need help!” Mr. McCarthy insisted. Mr. Kushner turned off the shower and rushed to the White House.

Ivanka Trump had spent much of the day trying to keep her father from going too far. She had refused to address the rally on the Ellipse but at the last minute was so concerned by her father’s anger toward Mr. Pence that she decided to accompany him there in hopes of avoiding a worse clash. Over the following hours, as rioters rampaged through the Capitol, she ran up and down the stairs in the West Wing from her office to the Oval Office hoping to persuade her father to issue stronger statements calling off the attackers.

By the time Mr. Kushner finally arrived at the White House, his wife had gotten her father to release a video telling supporters to go home. But even then, he repeated his lies about the “fraudulent election” and expressed solidarity with the rioters, telling them, “We love you, you’re very special.” Mr. Kushner quickly concluded there was little more he could do at that point.

In the days that followed, Mr. Kushner tried to broker peace between the president and vice president. On Jan. 11, he asked Mr. Short to come to his office. Would the vice president be willing to get together with the president?

“He’s always willing,” Mr. Short replied. “But that’s not his responsibility to reconcile this relationship. That invitation should come from the other end of the hall.”

“That’s what I’m doing, Marc,” Mr. Kushner said.

At Kushner’s arrangement, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence sat down that afternoon with no staff for an hour and a half. Mr. Pence reported back to aides that it was somewhat warm. But it was only a bandage over a gaping wound.


Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attended a farewell ceremony for the outgoing president on January 20, 2021, and were moving out of
Washington the next day. Pete Marovich for The New York Times

On Jan. 20, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump attended the farewell ceremony for the outgoing president at Joint Base Andrews and accompanied him on Air Force One to Florida. Mr. Trump was heading into exile, prepared to keep waging war on Mr. Biden and the system, insisting he really won.

Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump would have nothing to do with that. The next day, two moving trucks showed up at their Kalorama house to load up the furniture and a Peloton bike for the journey south to a luxury multilevel condo they had rented to live in while waiting for their new mansion to be built.

They were moving on to their new life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/politics/jared-kushner-trump-jan-6.html