Many staffers avoided Trump after election loss for fear he'd 'ensnare' them in illegal activities: NYT

On Friday, The New York Times revealed during an analysis of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's roles in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election that White House aides actively avoided former President Donald Trump in the waning days of his term — afraid that he would order them to commit illegal acts.

"No two people had positioned themselves as prominently in Mr. Trump’s White House as his daughter and his son-in-law, who came on as official advisers despite anti-nepotism laws and warnings from other aides that hiring family members can be fraught. Over four years, the two tended carefully to their images," said the report. "Aides feared getting on the wrong side of the couple, who lived in Washington’s expensive Kalorama neighborhood and hosted dinners for the city’s political elite."

However, the Times reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner did not intervene to get Trump to back off his claims, but instead left that task to lower-level staffers who feared confronting the former president directly.

"Shortly after Election Day, most aides tried to avoid the Oval Office, fearful of having to listen to Mr. Trump vent," the Times reports. "They were also eager to avoid the worst- case scenario: a directive from Mr. Trump that might have been illegal, and could have ensnared them in an investigation."

READ MORE: Fox News did 'something worse' than merely ignoring Jan. 6 hearings: analysis

During the first night of public hearings by the January 6 Committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) revealed that Ivanka privately accepted Attorney General William Barr's conclusion that Trump's conspiracy theories about the election being stolen were "bullsh*t" — even if she did little to nothing publicly to go against her father.

Even Trump's own campaign staff told him that there was no election fraud out there, as he continued to push the lies that inspired people to attack the Capitol.