The election results were rolling in, and so were the phone calls for Donald Trump. But no matter who was on the other end of the line, the person handing the phone to the next president of the United States was the same.

“Jared was screening the calls,” said Armstrong Williams, a political ally who described the scene in Trump's Manhattan skyscraper on election night.

That would be Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and his election-night role provides a glimpse of the enormous influence he wields as Trump prepares to take office in January. As the husband of Ivanka Trump, the president-elect's elder daughter, Kushner holds an unassailable position inside Trump's unruly ecosystem of advisers.

Another sign came two days after the election, when Trump met with President Barack Obama. Kushner strolled the White House complex with Obama's chief of staff, a pairing that suggested his status in the incoming administration.

The 35-year-old Kushner is not likely to have a formal role in the White House, said Jason Miller, the communications director for Trump's transition team. An official appointment would test an anti-nepotism law enacted after President John F. Kennedy made his brother, Robert, his attorney general.

But Kushner, whom Miller described as Trump's “eyes and ears” during the campaign, is likely to remain a key figure.

On Tuesday, Trump suggested to The New York Times that Kushner, an observant Jew and dedicated supporter of Israel, could help negotiate peace in the Middle East. He already participated in a meeting with Trump and Japan's prime minister.

“The president-elect knows that the only person Jared is looking out for is the president-elect,” Miller said. “He doesn't have any other agendas or motives or fiefdoms. And in the world of politics … that's frequently hard to find.”

Past presidents have similarly turned to family members as advisers and, in some cases, enforcers. In the George H.W. Bush administration, for example, the president's son, George W. Bush, played an important, behind the scenes role in ensuring fealty to the president.

But Trump has only a small circle of political professionals, giving relatives like Kushner an outsized voice in his orbit.

Before Kushner joined Trump's family, he learned the role of loyalty from his own. Kushner's father, Charlie, is the architect of a real estate empire in New Jersey. His finances caught the attention of federal authorities, led by the then-U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie, who investigated him for tax evasion and improper campaign contributions.

His father eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison, but Kushner's devotion to him remained.

“I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way (prosecutors) pursued him,” he told the Real Deal, a real estate website, in 2014.

This year, Christie was tapped to head Trump's transition planning before he was abruptly sidelined after the election.

Kushner denied that he personally pushed out the governor.

In his 20s, an age when many are hunting for their first jobs, Kushner was entering the upper levels of New York society. He purchased the New York Observer, a Manhattan-based newspaper known for its elite readership.

“He looks young. But he doesn't act young,” said Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a prestigious business group. “I'm double his age, and I take him very seriously.”

Kushner married Ivanka Trump in 2009 and they have three young children.

Kushner reportedly helped create the online fundraising and data analysis operations that helped Trump achieve victory.

He became known as a trusted, behind-the-scenes power broker.

“I helped facilitate a lot of relationships that wouldn't have happened otherwise,” Kushner told Forbes.

Although Trump has attracted support from white nationalists and anti-Semites, Kushner has defended him against charges of prejudice.

“The fact is that my father-in-law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife,” Kushner wrote in The Observer.

It was yet another display of loyalty.

No matter what, Williams, said, “he watches his father-in-law's back, like a hawk.”

chris.megerian@latimes.com