A procession of denials by Cabinet secretaries and White House officials has done little to abate Donald Trump’s rage over the anonymous op-ed The New York Times published on Wednesday. Flying to Fargo, North Dakota, on Friday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the writer of the piece. Trump’s escalation of his war against the Times, close on the heels of the rollout of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, has sent the West Wing into paroxysms of paranoia and suspicion. “It’s a hall of mirrors,” one Republican close to the president told me.

Trump continues to be in a dark mood. “Rip-shit,” one person familiar with his thinking told me. “He’s punch-drunk,” one outside adviser said. “He’s been hit so hard this week he doesn’t know what to do.” Another outside adviser to the White House added, “He’s not happy he has saboteurs of unelected people trying to pull off a coup d’etat.”

With Trump so far unable to execute a strategy to stanch the drip-drip-drip of damaging disclosures, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have taken the lead in getting control of the crisis. (The Washington Post reported that Trump said the only people he could trust were his family.) Earlier this week, they told Trump they were deeply troubled by the accounts in Woodward’s book and blamed Chief of Staff John Kelly for many of the leaks, an outside adviser close to them told me. “‘He’s destroying your presidency,’” Ivanka told her father, the outside adviser, who was briefed on the conversation, said. Their hunt for the author of the Times op-ed may bring them into the final chapter of their long-running feud with Kelly.

According to three sources, Jared and Ivanka floated a theory on Wednesday that Kelly could be behind the Times op-ed. Under this scenario, the sources said, the op-ed was written by Zachary Fuentes, the deputy chief of staff, at the direction of Kelly. Jared and Ivanka have told people they suspect this because Kelly is the only one with an ego so large as to have convinced himself that he’s saving the country from Trump, which was one of the op-ed’s principal arguments. On Wednesday night, Ivanka and Jared laid out for Trump the theory that Fuentes might be the author, an outside adviser with knowledge of the conversation told me. (A White House spokesperson said this is “untrue.” Fuentes has denied writing the piece.)

Trump disagreed with their theory, an outside adviser said. He told one ally that the op-ed was possibly written by someone who wants to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing by weakening the president this week, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Ivanka has been frustrated that her father won’t take action against Kelly, an outside adviser said. She’s told people that Trump still sees Kelly as a “John Wayne figure,” and that Trump is worried that if Kelly is fired, he’ll become even more dangerous as an outside critic.

But for Javanka and others, Kelly and Fuentes are far from the only suspects, and West Wing advisers continue to hunt for the author. The Times reported yesterday that the White House has a list of around 12 potential suspects. According to one person familiar with the list, one person being scrutinized is Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman. One former West Wing official said that Huntsman had three strikes against him: he served in the Barack Obama administration, he was very close with John McCain, and he has political ambitions of his own. (A White House spokesperson said there is no 12-person list.)

Update: Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Abbe Lowell, attorney for Jared Kushner, emailed after publication: "We told Vanity Fair three times that it's reporter or whatever anonymous source he claimed to have said this was flat out wrong. Jared and Ivanka never said this to anyone because the idea never crossed their mind. This is Vanity Fair's latest chapter of fiction that should never have been published as 'news.'"