A crime or just political jostling? Jury hears arguments in former AT&T exec’s bribery trial

In the end, after all the sweating by AT&T President Paul La Schiazza over House Speaker Michael Madigan’s power to block favorable legislation and all the handwringing over secretly hiring a Madigan ally to win the speaker’s influence, it wound up being a “pretty successful” bribery scheme, a federal prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.

AT&T got its bill to end mandated landline service, a national priority that stood to save the phone giant hundreds of millions of dollars. La Schiazza got the “white whale” he’d spent years chasing, backslaps from superiors and a nice little $85,000 bonus. And former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo got his $22,500 payday, in the form of a do-nothing “consulting” contract, the prosecutor said.

But all the wheeling and dealing left just one constituency in the lurch, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sushma Raju said Tuesday during closing arguments in La Schiazza’s bribery trial.

“It shorted the people of Illinois, who deserved a fair, transparent and honest legislative process,” Raju said. “What we got instead was a legislative process that was tainted by this defendant, who paid for the result he wanted. It was not lobbying …it was a crime and Paul La Schiazza knew it.”

The defense argument that followed painted a far different picture, one of common dealings between the corporate and political worlds.

The COLR relief legislation “took years of legitimate, tireless hard work, not just by our client…a team effort by AT&T to get something done lawfully and appropriately as the law allows them to do,” La Schiazza lawyer Tinos Diamantatos told the jury.

“This was no bribe” and the government didn’t even prove that Madigan was aware of the hiring of Acevedo, Diamantatos said. “The government failed to meet its burden. It wasn’t even close.”

Making a hire like Acevedo is what lobbyists do, Diamantatos explained.

If the fix was in, there would be no further effort to pass COLR. “We bribed a king. This should sail right through!” Diamantatos said in a mocking tone

La Schiazza, 66, was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in October 2022 with conspiracy, federal program bribery and using a facility in interstate commerce to promote unlawful activity.

The most serious counts carry up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty and has been free on bond while his case is pending.

According to prosecutors, La Schiazza schemed to pay Acevedo, a longtime Madigan acolyte, a total of $22,500 over nine months for doing little or no work for AT&T, even though he ostensibly was supposed to produce a report on the Latino caucuses in Springfield and Chicago’s City Hall.

The arrangement, which was pushed by longtime Madigan confidant Michael McClain, came as AT&T was looking to pass a bill ending mandated landline service, which stood to save the company millions of dollars, according to trial testimony.

La Schiazza’s lawyers contend that Acevedo’s hiring was nothing more than the typical relationship building that is necessary in politics, especially when a company is trying to get lawmakers to consider its agenda. They also told the jury there was no evidence that La Schiazza thought what he was doing was improper — an element that prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Raju, however, argued Tuesday that La Schiazza believed “the whole system was rigged from the beginning,” showing the jury an emails he wrote where he called the speaker “King Madigan” and lamented how much power he wielded in the House.

“(Madigan’s) control of the legislature was unquestioned and unmatched and the defendant and AT&T knew that fact. The bottom line is, if Madigan did not want a bill to go forward, for whatever reason, he had a number of ways to stall it or kill it,” Raju said.

With the landline bill, known by the acronym COLR, Madigan’s support became all that more coveted, Raju said. Without it, AT&T knew it would waste $250 million to $1 billion on upkeep of the old copper wire system instead of investing in new technologies like broadband and internet.

“The pressure was on,” Raju said. “This was a national priority for the company and it was something being tracked. The responsibility was squarely on La Schiazza’s shoulders.”

When Madigan reached out to AT&T through “his right- hand man” and solicited a bribe, La Schiazza faced a fork in the road, Raju said. He chose wrong.

“Paul La Schiazza did not choose the high road,” she said. “He paid the bribe because he wanted the rigged system to work in his favor.”

Raju said the “moment of truth” came on Feb. 14, 2017, when AT&T lobbyist Bob Barry received a fateful email from McClain soliciting a bribe. It was “short and sweet,” Raju said.

“BOB is there even a small contract for Eddie Acevedo?” McClain wrote.

The McClain email came in just four hours after Madigan had finally expressed interest in sitting down with AT&T on the COLR relief bill, something he’d been unwilling to do just a few years earlier.

Raju said McClain didn’t need to say “do this for that” or otherwise spell out what hiring Acevedo would mean. AT&T knew instantly what it was.

“(La Schiazza) knew the game was on,” she said.

To hide the payments, La Schiazza and others at AT&T arranged to pay Acevedo’s contract through the lobbying firm run by Tom Cullen, one of Madigan’s former political point men who testified he only agreed to the deal because he was a “team player.”

Both Cullen and another witness, AT&T external affairs officer Steve Selcke, testified that Acevedo, whose penchant for drinking and sometimes belligerent behavior was well-known in Springfield, was far from an ideal hire for AT&T, but the deal went forward anyways at McClain’s urging to appease the speaker at a critical time for the company.

In her closing remarks to the jury, Raju noted that the contract terms for Acevedo were reached before anyone even told him he was being considered for a position — far from typical business practices at a large company.

“No one even bothered to reach out to Acevedo and tell him you already have a job, Raju said. “Think about that for a second. He has a job and a paycheck? He didn’t fill out an application. Didn’t sit for an interview.”

Just days after COLR passed and was signed into law, La Schiazza received a request from Madigan’s son, Andrew Madigan, asking for a charitable contribution, setting off a flurry of emails that Raju said showed that La Schiazza knew the arrangement to hire Acevedo was improper.

“Here we go … this will be endless,” La Schiazza wrote to colleague Bob Barry, a leader on AT&T’s government relations team, about the request from Andrew Madigan. Barry, responded, “I suspect the ‘thank you’ opportunities will be plentiful.”

“Yep … we are on the friends and family plan now,” La Schiazza replied.

AT&T wound up donating $2,500 to Andrew Madigan’s charity, according to evidence presented in court Monday.

Raju said the sentiment was clear. “This is the defendant acknowledging that AT&T had given Madigan something and gotten something in return,” she said.

“It’s not building goodwill. It’s not just kissing up to Madigan,” Raju said. “They needed to bribe Madigan to move the bill forward…Madigan did the ask. The defendant gave. COLR bill goes forward.”

The trial, which proceeded far quicker than the original three-week estimate, has offered a sneak peek at evidence that will be presented at Madigan’s own racketeering trial, which kicks off in three weeks.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com