Federal investigators are looking into the possibility that Paul Manafort promised a Chicago banker a job in the White House in exchange for $16 million in home loans, NBC News reports.
The possible quid pro quo deal was first unearthed by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators.
Manafort is already staring down a 12-count indictment for money laundering and other charges and an impending trial.
Investigators now are looking into three different loans totaling $16 million made by Federal Savings Bank (FSB) in Chicago to Manafort in December 2016 and January 2017, NBC reports.
The president of FSB is Stephen Calk, who was named to President Donald Trump's Council of Economic Advisers in August 2016.
NBC reports that FSB officials questioned the loans, amounting to 5 percent of all the loans made by the bank, including at least one who felt pressure to approve them.
Manafort left his role as Trump's campaign chairman in August 2016 over blowback from reports that he had earned millions working on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
Calk never did get a job in the White House, and administration officials did not respond to NBC's question of whether Manafort ever lobbied the White House on Calk's behalf.
Federal investigators say they have "substantial evidence" that Manafort fraudulently secured the loans, using two of his three properties as collateral, based on false representations of income.
Manafort owns homes in the Hamptons, Brooklyn and Virginia.
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