“He helped get Trump in the White House, and at the end of this, he’s going to ask a President Trump to pardon his father,” a source familiar with the campaign recently told me. This person was referring, of course, to Jared Kushner, the 35-year-old son-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump, and the eldest son of Charles Kushner, the New Jersey real-estate titan who pleaded guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations, and witness tampering more than a decade ago. Charles, who also admitted that he had set up his brother-in-law with a prostitute and taped the exchange to exact revenge, was sentenced to two years in 2005. He spent 16 months in an Alabama prison. A presidential pardon wouldn’t expunge his records, but it would pardon various rights, and of course, reputational matters arising from the conviction.

The trauma had quite an impact on his son, Jared Kushner, who had recently graduated from Harvard and would regularly fly down on weekends to visit his father. And that anger may not have subsided entirely. Some have speculated that the younger Kushner, who appears to wield considerable sway over his father-in-law, may have exacted some revenge of his own last week when Chris Christie, who helped prosecute the government’s case against Charles Kushner as a U.S. attorney, was demoted from his role as the chief of Trump's transition team. “Look at what happened with Christie,” this source continued. (A person close to Kushner called this interpretation “ridiculous.” A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether President-elect Trump would consider such a pardon.)

Within the maelstrom of Trump’s inner circle—a three ring circus that has included Corey Lewandowski, until he was out; Paul Manafort, until he was out; Christie, until he was demoted; perhaps Lewandowski again; and then Stephen Bannon, until he appeared to be checked by the more palatable Reince Priebus—Kushner’s influence has remained a constant. Kushner has, in fact, become a silent power broker behind a number of key campaign decisions, and now, reportedly, may take a formal role within the White House. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night, sources close to the transition are saying that Kushner could be named a senior advisor or special counsel to the President, at the urging of Priebus and some of the team’s inner circle. As The Washington Post reported, he was instrumental in not only the ouster of Christie, but also several other key associates. (A spokesperson for Trump has denied to The New York Times that Kushner was behind any such purge.) Meanwhile, he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have been named to Trump’s transition committee, along with the president-elect’s two grown sons. Kushner was also spotted meandering around the White House grounds with President __Barack Obama’s__chief of staff while Trump was educated on the very fundamentals of the presidency. Over the weekend, Politico reported that Trump had been leaning toward naming Bannon as his chief of staff until Kushner urged him to reconsider. On Sunday, his father-in-law instead named Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, to the role. By Monday, outlets were reporting that Trump had asked officials to give his three adult children and son-in-law top-secret security clearances. (Trump, however, later tweeted that he had not made such a request.) On Tuesday, NBC News reported that Trump requested that Kushner not only receive this top-level security clearance, but that he also be included in his Presidential Daily Briefings.

Typically, this sort of nepotism is barred. A 1967 law bans presidents from appointing family members to government jobs and Cabinet positions. (Shortly after his election in 1960, John Kennedy appointed his younger brother Bobby as attorney general.) And while Kushner’s proximity to the president raises all sorts of ethical questions, the more pressing curiosity is why Kushner is enduring all this tumult in the first place. Why would a mild-mannered Jewish kid from an establishment Democratic family, particularly one who enjoys a charmed life in Manhattan, defy what would seem to be his interests, his scruples, and his easy existence? (Among other things, Kushner might be in conflict with his younger brother, Josh Kushner, who runs a health-care start-up called Oscar that sells health insurance to individuals on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Trump has noted that he would like to revise parts of Obamacare, though Oscar also seems to be pivoting its business model away from the A.C.A., too. A spokesperson for Oscar said “We can’t speculate on what the election outcome means for the healthcare industry” but noted that Oscar is prepared for whatever comes next.) What’s Kushner’s master plan? Or is there even one at all?