Chicago Banker Stephen Calk Convicted Of Trying To Buy Trump Administration Post With Risky Loans To Paul Manafort
NEW YORK (CBS Chicago/CBS News/AP) -- A Chicago banker has been found guilty of giving risky loans to a former Trump campaign manager in exchange for a job in the White House.
Stephen Calk is the former chief executive officer of the Federal Savings Bank in Chicago.
On Tuesday, a New York jury convicted him of bribery and conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors said Calk helped ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort get $16 million in loans in exchange for an interview for a top job in the administration.
Manafort lobbied Mr. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to consider Calk for Secretary of the Army, according to emails from the weeks leading up to the 2016 election shown to jurors at Manafort's tax evasion and bank fraud trial in 2018.
Prosecutors said that while Manafort's loans were pending approval, Calk gave Manafort a ranked list of government positions he wanted, starting with Secretary of the Treasury, followed by Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Defense, as well as 19 ambassadorships similarly ranked and starting with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy.
Calk was formally interviewed for the position of under secretary of the Army in early January 2017 at the Presidential Transition Team's Manhattan offices, prosecutors noted.
But Calk never got an administration post, though he did approve Manafort's loans.
Calk was ultimately never offered a job, and the bank lost millions of dollars when Manafort defaulted on the loans.
In August 2016, CBS 2 Political Reporter Derrick Blakley sat down with Calk, who was giving then-Republican presidential nominee Trump economic advice. Calk called himself a centrist who backed President Obama in 2008. He said he had only met Trump three or four times, at social or charitable events.
"He seemed to take a real interest in the fact that I was a single dad, that I was a family man, that I built my business, and I think he had a lot of respect for that," Calk told Blakley in the 2016 interview.
