According to NBC News, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Paul Manafort promised a Chicago banker a Trump administration job in exchange for $16 million in home loans.
Manafort received three separate loans in December 2016 and January 2017 from Federal Savings Bank for homes in New York City, Virginia and the Hamptons.
The banker, Stephen Calk, president of the Federal Savings Bank, was announced as a member of candidate Trump's Council of Economic Advisers in August 2016.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is now investigating whether there was a quid pro quo agreement between Manafort and Calk.
Manafort left the Trump campaign in August 2016, and Calk did not get a White House job.
[S]ources say the three loans were questioned by other officials at the bank, and one source said that at least one of the bank employees who felt pressured into approving the deals is cooperating with investigators.
In court filings Friday related to Manafort's bail, federal prosecutors said they have "substantial evidence" that a loan made from the bank to Manafort using the Virginia and Hamptons properties as collateral was secured through false representations made by Manafort, including misstatements of income.
A Bloomberg Politics article from July 25, 2017 quotes Manafort spokeman Jason Maloni defending the loans as no big deal.
Jason Maloni ... mention[ed] that the loan from Calk’s bank is at 7.25 percent, above the market rate. “Paul Manafort’s loan from Federal Savings Bank is an arms-length transaction and sufficiently over-collateralized," he said. "Surely the loan represents a fraction of the bank’s total loan book, but that is a question for the bank and its loan committee.”
Manafort left the Trump campaign on August 19, 2016, and that same day, he set up "a holding company called Summerbreeze LLC" which took out a $3.5 million loan on his Bridgehampton beach house.
Manafort's LLC, Summerbreeze, then took out a new $9.5 million loan in December using the Hamptons property and house in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of the collateral. The lender was Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, whose chief executive, Calk, was an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.
In January 2017 Federal Savings Bank also lent Manafort and his wife mortgage loans in the amount of $5.3 million and $1.2 million for a separate property located at 377 Union Street in Brooklyn, New York.
The loans for the 377 Union property totaled 6.5 million and were for a property that Manafort initially bought for less than $3 million.
Between the Hamptons property and the Brooklyn property the Federal Savings Bank loaned Manafort $16 million or 5 percent of all of the bank's loans, according to records kept by the FDIC.
The loans were first examined by investigators and prosecutors working for Mueller, two people familiar with the probe told NBC News.
The Bloomberg Politics article about Calk also delves into his relationship with "one of [Donald] Trump’s closest friends, Howard Lorber" and how Lorber is connected to Russia and Ukraine.
Lorber is CEO of the Vector Group, parent company of the New York real estate powerhouse, Douglas Elliman Real Estate LLC. Last year, Trump described Lorber, who is also chairman of Douglas Elliman, as one of his two best friends. In 1996, Trump and Lorber were together in Moscow exploring business opportunities, accompanied by Bennett LeBow, the Vector Group’s founder and chairman.
LeBow is a longtime player in both the cigarette and real estate industries in Russia and Ukraine. Among his former business partners is Vadim Z. Rabinovich, a Ukrainian politician who was elected to parliament in 2014 as part of the pro-Russia party that employed Manafort before he signed onto Trump’s campaign.
The Vector Group made a "seven-figure" investment in Calk’s bank, according to a 2015 deposition by Calk; Lorber in a 2015 deposition put the figure at $2 million, though he wasn’t sure if the investment was made by Vector or Douglas Elliman. Neither of the men said when the investment was made.
Mueller asking if Manafort promised banker White House job in return for loans (NBC News)
Behind Manafort’s Loans, a Chopper Pilot Who Flew Into Trump’s Orbit (Bloomberg Politics)