Following testimony on a $3.4 million loan obtained by Paul Manafort in 2016 from employees at Citizen’s Bank, a third employee testified that Manafort’s application for a $5.5 million construction loan from that bank was denied later in the year.
Manafort was working on the Trump campaign as he worked with the bank to obtain the loan.
Emails shown during the testimony of Taryn Rodriguez, a loan officer assistant at Citizen’s Bank, indicate that Manafort applied for the construction loan on his property on Union Street in Brooklyn in early 2016 and engaged with bank employees about the loan until mid-August 2016.
Rodriguez testified that she discovered that Manafort had a mortgage on his Union Street property, a fact he and his deputy Rick Gates allegedly hid while applying for another loan at Citizen’s Bank that was approved. An email shown by prosecutors indicated that bank employees discovered this loan just a few days after Manafort closed on a loan for his Howard Street property, located in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.
Documents shown by prosecutors and Rodriguez’s testimony indicated that Manafort and Gates submitted a letter from their accountant claiming that a $1.5 million loan was forgiven in 2015 and a 2016 profit and loss statement. Testimony from earlier in the trial suggested that both of those documents were doctored in some way to inflate Manafort’s income.
