Two congressional Democrats are investigating whether a Chicago banker was offered a job in the Trump administration in exchange for lending $16 million to the president’s former campaign manager.
Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.,
Calk was seeking to be named Army secretary around the same time that his bank made the loans to former Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort, The Wall Street Journal
Calk is a former Army helicopter pilot
Manafort faces more than two dozen criminal charges as part of the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He has denied wrongdoing.
In charges filed last week, special prosecutor Robert Mueller alleged that Manafort made numerous false representations as he sought to secure mortgages totaling $16 million between July 2016 and January 2017.
The indictment did not identify the lender by name, but its description of the mortgages matches publicly available information about loans that Federal Savings Bank made to Manafort.
The two Democratic congressmen are asking the Defense Department to hand over all documents in its possession that relate to Calk, including any that refer to a potential job. Calk did not ultimately receive a job in the Trump administration.
Still, the two House Democrats contend that recent media reports regarding Calk and Manafort raise serious concerns that merit congressional scrutiny.
Mueller’s office is reportedly also investigating whether Calk made the loans to Manafort in exchange for a job in the Trump administration.
