Stephen M. Calk (born 1964/1965) is the founder, former
Chairman
The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...
and
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of The Federal Savings Bank, a federally chartered National
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Because ...
headquartered in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. He was an
economic advisor to Donald Trump during the
2016 United States presidential election campaign.
Calk was convicted of conspiracy and bribery in July 2021 for providing loans to
Paul Manafort
Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served ...
, the former chairman of the
2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign, in exchange for a possible high-ranking position in the Trump administration. He was sentenced to one year in prison in February 2022.
Early life and career
Calk was born in
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
, and was raised in
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
, and
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. He attended the
United States Military Academy Preparatory School
The United States Military Academy Preparatory School (USMAPS), sometimes referred to as West Point Prep, is a preparatory school for the United States Military Academy (USMA). Located in West Point, New York, its official mission is "to provi ...
, and is a 1988 graduate of the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...
.
In 1982, he enlisted in the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
and was honorably discharged as a private first class before he was early commissioned as an
army officer
An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an Military, armed force or Uniformed services, uniformed service.
Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant off ...
. He is a graduate of the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
Aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...
School and served in both active and reserve status as a combat
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
pilot and commander for over 16 years.
In 1998, Calk received a
Master of Business Administration
A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...
degree from the
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (also known as Kellogg) is the business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1908, Kellogg is one of the oldest and most p ...
. Calk is also a graduate of the nine-year Presidents Program in Leadership at
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
.
He served as chairman of the United States 10th Congressional District's Service Academy Selection Committee and as a certified leader in the
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA, colloquially the Boy Scouts) is one of the largest scouting organizations and one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with about 1.2 million youth participants. The BSA was founded i ...
. He served as a trustee for the University of Illinois St. John's Catholic Newman Center and on the board of the USO of
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
. From 2002, he was a member of the Chicago chapter of the World Presidents Organization and Young Presidents Organization. Calk was a trainer and mentor of junior military officers and senior
non-commissioned officers before taking command positions or returning to civilian life after service to their country. He serves as an ambassador for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
Calk's banking career began in 1995 when he founded Chicago Bancorp. He and his brother John were co-owners. In 2011, through a holding company, Calk and his brother John bought a small Kansas bank and renamed it the Federal Savings Bank, and by February 2012, the Federal Savings Bank was headquartered at the same address and in the same suite as Chicago Bancorp. In the spring of 2012, Calk struck a deal with Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. Calk promised that his Federal Savings Bank "will endeavor to hire as many qualified Chicago residents as possible" in exchange for receiving taxpayer-funded grants from the city of $10,000 per employee, to be used for job training. Between 2012 and 2015, Calk's Federal Savings Bank received $3.6 million in taxpayer-funded grants. In a June 2012 press conference with Emanuel, Calk described the Federal Savings Bank as relocating to Chicago as a result of Emanuel's efforts. However, according to expert testimony in a subsequent trial, 197 of the Federal Savings Bank's new hires had previously worked at Calk's Chicago Bancorp, which only had 223 employees at the start of 2012 and was formally dissolved in early 2013. The magazine American Banker described the Calk brothers as pulling off "a neat trick": "Their bank, among the most profitable in the country that year, collected $3.6 million in public subsidies in substantial part by rehiring employees who they had recently fired from a separate company that they also owned."
Calk, Chicago Bancorp, and the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago were sued in 2012 and again in 2014 by CitiMortgage for alleged inaccuracies and misrepresentations in loans that Calk's enterprises had originated and later sold to CitiMortgage.
In 2014, the Federal Savings Bank signed an agreement to cooperate with the New York City real estate firm Douglas Elliman, and in exchange, either Douglas Elliman or its parent company, the Vector Group, invested $2 million in Calk's bank, according to a 2015 deposition by Howard Lorber, the Vector Group's CEO. The collaboration foundered, however, and was terminated in 2014. In the 2015 deposition, Lorber called Calk difficult to work with and called Calk's account of their collaboration "completely delusional." Lorber, a longtime friend and ally of Trump's, later served with Calk on the Trump campaign's economic council.
Calk was named to the Trump campaign's economic advisory panel in August 2016.
In 2019, Calk resigned as chairman and
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
from the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago.
Loans to Paul Manafort
Manafort first got in touch with Calk's Federal Savings Bank of Chicago in April 2016, according to testimony given by the bank's senior vice president Dennis Raico at Manafort's August 2018 trial for fraud and tax evasion. Manafort, Calk, and Raico discussed loans and politics over dinner in New York in May 2016. On July 28, Calk became directly involved in discussions about loans to Manafort and his son-in-law for investment properties, which Raico told the court was unusual. Subsequently, over a lunch, Calk and Manafort discussed another loan. On October 6, 2016, Manafort emailed Calk to say that he had been mistaken in saying at this lunch that he owed $2.5 million on a Bridgehampton, New York, property that he intended to use as collateral. In fact he owed $3 million. "I must have had a blackout," Manafort wrote in his email. On October 16, Manafort asked to change the terms of the loan, requesting a line of credit on the property instead of using it as collateral for a construction loan for a California property. In his application materials for the loan, Manafort provided a 2016 income statement for himself that his business partner Rick Gates later testified was false.
James Brennan, another vice president at the bank, testified at Manafort's trial that Manafort failed to declare in his application materials that two of his New York properties were already mortgaged and that Manafort's statements about his income in 2015 were inconsistent.
Brennan also testified that bank employees had noticed that Manafort seemed to have no income as of July 2016, though he claimed to be owed $2.4 million, and that he was more than 90 days late on a $300,000 credit card bill.
Concerns within the bank about the propriety of the loan were overruled by Calk, however, and on November 16, 2016, Manafort received from Calk's bank a $9.5 million cash-out refinance loan on a house in Bridgehampton, New York. "It closed because Mr. Calk wanted it to close," Brennan testified.
On January 4, 2017, Manafort received an additional loan from Calk's bank, a $6.5 million construction loan on a property on Union Street in New York City.
The two loans, totalling about $16 million, were the largest and second-largest ever issued by the bank.
[ ] The combined size of the loans at the time represented around 5 percent of the bank's asset base of $341 million,
and represented about 22 percent of the bank's equity capital of $72 million.
The bank has since written the loans off as a loss.
Investigation, indictment, and trial
At a 2018 bail hearing and in a superseding indictment filed against Trump's former campaign manager,
Paul Manafort
Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served ...
, the office of
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York ...
alleged that Manafort had fraudulently applied for around $16 million in loans from "Lender D," reported by multiple sources at the time as the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, before and shortly after the
2016 presidential election. In court filings Mueller alleged that Manafort had doctored financial statements from his lobbying firm, "overstating its income by millions of dollars," and had committed a "series of bank loans and bank loan conspiracies."
In February 2018 the ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' and other media outlets reported that Mueller's office was investigating whether there had been a ''
quid pro quo
Quid pro quo ('what for what' in Latin) is a Latin phrase used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other; "a favor for a favor". Phrases with similar meanings include: "give and take", ...
'' arrangement in which Calk approved the loans in return for a position in the Trump administration as
Secretary of the Army.
Calk had been named to the Trump campaign's economic advisory panel in August 2016, at Manafort's suggestion, several months after they had begun discussing a possible loan for Manafort.
During Manafort's August 2018 trial, prosecutors introduced as evidence emails from Calk showing that on August 4, 2016, he wrote Manafort that "I am happy and willing to serve," and that in November, just after Trump's election, he sent Manafort a resume and a request to be nominated Secretary of the Army, adding that he would also be willing to serve as chief of the departments of Treasury, Commerce, Housing or Urban Development, and Defense, or as ambassador to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Ireland, Australia, China, United Nations, the European Union, Portugal, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Singapore.
[ ] After Trump's election, Calk instructed Dennis Raico, a senior vice president for Calk's bank, to ask Manafort whether Calk might be named Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, according to testimony at Manafort's trial by Raico, although Raico also testified that, embarrassed by the request, he never did ask.
During the presidential transition, Manafort wrote in an email to his former deputy Rick Gates, then serving on the inauguration committee, that "we need to discuss Steve Calk for Secretary of Army."
On November 30, 2016, Manafort sent an email to
Jared Kushner
Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to 45th U.S. president Donald Trump, his father-in-law. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a pri ...
recommending Calk be named Secretary of the Army, to which Kushner replied, "On it!" Shortly before Christmas 2016, Manafort added Calk and Calk's son to a list of people to be invited to Trump's inauguration.
Calk did not become a finalist for any government positions in the Trump administration.
In May 2019, Calk was indicted in Manhattan's Federal District Court on one count of financial institution bribery, for having pushed the Federal Savings Bank to grant $16 million of loans to Manafort in hopes of winning a government position. The trial was delayed during the coronavirus pandemic, as prosecutors found it difficult to persuade witnesses to travel from Illinois to New York City. In July 2021, a jury unanimously found Calk guilty of financial institution bribery and conspiracy to commit financial institution bribery. In February 2022, Calk was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and ordered to pay more than $1 million in fines.
See also
*
List of economic advisors to Donald Trump in 2016 presidential campaign
References
External links
Federal Savings Bank of Chicago
{{DEFAULTSORT:Calk, Stephen
1960s births
American chief executives of financial services companies
Kellogg School of Management alumni
Living people
Trump administration personnel
United States Army aviators
United States Army officers
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)