No hope for accused Chicago banker’s bid for top Army job, says ex-Trump White House staffer Anthony Scaramucci at NYC trial

They tried to mooch off The Mooch.

Former Trump administration official Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci said his phone buzzed in December 2016 and January 2017 with calls between Donald Trump fixer Paul Manafort and Stephen Calk, a Chicago banker who was angling for a Trump administration job.

At the top of Calk’s list of “preferred positions,” per Scaramucci’s recollection: Secretary of the Army.

It wasn’t going to happen, Scaramucci testified Thursday at Calk’s bribery trial in Manhattan Federal Court.

“I told Mr. Manafort that we had someone in the queue,” Scaramucci testified — meaning that someone else was already lined up for the job. The best he could do, Scaramucci said, was line up an interview for Calk to become undersecretary of the Army.

“He will def take it,” Manafort said to the second-option proposal in a text shown to jurors.

Scaramucci — who for 11 days in July 2017 was the White House communications director — took the stand to tell the jury about Manafort’s futile efforts to land a gig for Calk.

Scaramucci said Manafort failed to tell him that his friend Calk was also his banker — and that at the same time Manafort was pushing Calk for a Trump administration job, he was also trying to score from him two loans worth more than $16 million, prosecutors say.

“If he had said either of those things to you, would you have passed on Stephen Calk’s name” to other Trump associates? asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Rothman.

“No,” Scaramucci replied.

During opening statements Wednesday, the jury heard that Calk changed course on election night on a $9.5 million loan to Manafort that had appeared doomed.

As it became clear Trump would win the presidency, Calk texted Manafort to tell him he’d finalize the once-doomed loan the very next day.

The feds have charged Calk with one count of financial institution bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit financial institution bribery. He maintains his innocence.

Scaramucci was fired from his position as White House communications director after he called up a reporter for The New Yorker and unleashed an expletive-laden rant complaining about his colleagues in the West Wing.

The Mooch will return to the stand when Calk’s trial resumes on Tuesday. He had no comment leaving court, noting, “That’s unusual for me, right?”