Jury now weighing whether former AT&T exec accused of bribing Madigan played politics or committed crime

In the end, after all the sweating and hand-wringing over Michael Madigan’s power to make or break their legislation, AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza’s scheme to bribe the Democratic leader was “pretty successful,” 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. The now-former company leader La Schiazza got the “white whale” he’d spent years chasing, back slaps from superiors and a nice little $85,000 bonus. Even former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, a Madigan ally, got a $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 in her closing argument 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.”

But the defense argument that followed painted a far different picture, one of common and completely legal dealings between the corporate and political worlds, where companies routinely seek to curry favor with politicians in order to get them to consider their agenda.

The legislation AT&T wanted passed, known by the acronym COLR, “took years of legitimate, tireless hard work,” and not just by La Schiazza, defense attorney Tinos Diamantatos told the jury in his closing remarks.

“It was a team effort by AT&T to get something done lawfully and appropriately as the law allows them to do,” Diamantatos said. “This was no bribe. … The government failed to meet its burden. It wasn’t even close.”

The jury of four men and eight women was sent back at 2:40 p.m. and elected to go home after deliberating for about an hour and a half without reaching a verdict. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman told them to return at 9 a.m. Wednesday for further discussion.

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.

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.

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 the COLR bill, which stood to save the company hundreds of millions of dollars, according to trial testimony.

Echoing arguments in the “ComEd Four” trial last year that featured similar accusations of bribing Madigan, Diamantatos on Tuesday called La Schiazza collateral damage in the government’s zeal to bring down the powerful speaker, and urged jurors to end the “nightmare” La Schiazza has been living since finding himself in the prosecution’s crosshairs.

“The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that this case is riddled with unanswered questions on the key important points,” Diamantatos said. “Paul is 100% innocent of these crimes. He was doing his job. He never offered anything to Mr. Madigan in exchange for an official action.”

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, referring to an email seen by the jury where La Schiazza referred to the speaker as “King Madigan.”

Working from a white poster board set up in the middle of the courtroom, Diamantatos listed what he described as a litany of “holes in case,” including on explicit testimony that the payments to Acevedo were a bribe, no surveillance or wiretapped conversations, and no proof that Madigan was even aware that Acevedo had been hired.

He 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.

But prosecutors said there was plenty of evidence that La Schiazza knew the line he was crossing.

In her closing argument, Raju said La Schiazza believed “the whole system was rigged from the beginning,” making Madigan’s support for the landline bill all that more crucial to its passage. Without it, AT&T knew it would waste up to $1 billion on upkeep of the old copper wire system instead of investing in new technologies such as broadband and internet, she said.

“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 in February 2017 when Madigan, after years of opposition, had finally expressed interest in sitting down with AT&T on the COLR relief bill.

Four hours after that overture, 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.

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 anyway 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 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.

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

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

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

Diamantatos told the jury Tuesday the “friends and family” reference was a joke, and certainly not evidence that Madigan had been bribed. He also blasted the government’s case for being based largely on the prosecution’s interpretation of emails and text messages, not live testimony.

But Diamantatos did highlight one email that he said is hugely problematic for prosecutors, where La Schiazza mentioned needing “legal approval to engage” Acevedo as a subcontractor.

“Is this someone acting corruptly? Illegally? Trying to bribe?” Diamantatos said. “Who’s trying to pull the wool over whose eyes?”

All of the discussion of Acevedo’s hiring was done “openly, freely,” Diamantatos said. “There was no ‘Let’s take this offline. Let’s talk about this at the pizzeria down the street. Stop emailing me on my AT&T account.’ That in itself tells you Paul is 100% innocent,” he said.

Diamantatos also said the feds spent time “throwing shade on” Acevedo to make the contract look illegitimate. “It was a real job where he was expected to do real work. He’s a consultant getting paid what sounds like market rate,” he said.

In rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman called that idea preposterous. As AT&T’s senior compliance officer, La Schiazza’s “antennae should have been flying up in the air” over McClain’s request to hire Acevedo, he said. Instead, he jumped right in.

“They simply went forward and did it,” Chapman said. “And again, Eddie didn’t do any work. Nobody cared. They knew … exactly what this was. And that’s why it was not bona fide compensation. There is nothing normal about this deal.”

Chapman said La Schiazza and his team also certainly knew that Acevedo’s hiring connected right back to Madigan.

“This sort of, ‘Oh, we had no idea how any of this could have been linked to Madigan’ is just silly,” he said.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com