Jury selection begins in trial of former AT&T Illinois chief accused of bribing Madigan
Trial of former spokesman for organized crime scheduled for next month
By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
[email protected]
CHICAGO – Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the trial of Paul La Schiazza, the former president of AT&T Illinois, who federal prosecutors accuse of bribing the once-powerful Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, Michael Madigan, in exchange for favorable legislation in Springfield.
It is the latest in a series of similar proceedings that have taken place in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse over the past 18 months and now lead to Madigan’s own trial on bribery and organized crime charges, which is set to begin Oct. 8. Last year, a jury convicted four former executives and lobbyists for utility company Commonwealth Edison of bribing Madigan over a nine-year period and giving his allies jobs and contracts to help the utility win its legislative battles.
Read more: “ComEd Four” found guilty on all counts in bribery trial involving former Speaker Madigan | Madigan case expands as AT&T agrees to $23 million fine
La Schiazza is accused of a similar plot, albeit on a much smaller scale. Instead of securing dozens of jobs and contracts for Madigan allies, the alleged bribery of AT&T involved the utility funneling payments to a single man: former Democratic state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, who also worked as a subcontractor lobbyist for ComEd for nearly a decade.
Acevedo, who reportedly did little or no work for the two utility companies, already served a short prison sentence for tax evasion in connection with the larger federal investigation into Madigan’s entourage and is expected to testify in the trial against the former speaker.
La Schiazza approved AT&T’s retention of Acevedo in spring 2017, when the utility was making another attempt at a key piece of legislation that had already failed twice. AT&T wanted to opt out of an Illinois law that required the telecom giant to offer traditional wireline service. The utility said maintaining an aging cable system costs millions of dollars and prevents major investments in more forward-looking technologies like wireless and internet.
In July of that year, AT&T won when the General Assembly overrode then-Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto of the bill, which centered on the bill’s increase in 911 fees.
Less than a week later, La Schiazza received an email from Madigan’s son, Andrew, asking him to sponsor a charitable event, according to a state attorney’s office filing in the spring. In the email, Andrew Madigan said his request was “at the suggestion of our good friend Mike McClain,” referring to the speaker’s close confidant who helped arrange Acevedo’s lobbying contract earlier this year.
McClain, who retired in 2017 from his decades-long career as ComEd’s top outside lobbyist, was convicted last year as part of the “ComEd Four” and is also Madigan’s co-defendant in next month’s organized crime trial. Prosecutors have relied heavily on McClain’s own words in wiretapped phone conversations in which he referred to himself as an “agent” of Madigan, both before and after his official retirement from lobbying.
La Schiazza forwarded Andrew Madigan’s request to a colleague, saying “this will take forever”.
“I suspect there will be plenty of opportunities to say thank you,” the colleague replied, which the government believed was a reference to the passing of the Landline Act.
“Yep… we have the friends and family rate now,” joked La Schiazza in his response.
Prosecutors claim that this exchange, which will be shown at trial, “demonstrates that the defendant knew that AT&T’s responses to Madigan’s inquiries played a role in her success in the law.”
But La Schiazza claims that Andrew Madigan’s request for sponsorship of the nonprofit event was exactly the kind of “tip” that a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this summer ruled was not covered by federal bribery law.
Defendants in all of the Madigan-related cases, including the already convicted ComEd Four, sought to use the Supreme Court decision to undermine the government’s prosecution, arguing that the decision made clear that in cases of bribery, a clear quid pro quo agreement must be made before any “official act” is performed.
Read more: One month after Supreme Court bribery ruling, Madigan-related corruption cases move forward | Supreme Court ruling could overturn federal corruption cases against Madigan and his allies
But while the judge in the ComEd case considers arguments to overturn those convictions, the judges overseeing both Madigan’s and La Schiazza’s cases have not yet been persuaded by arguments to throw out some of the government’s bribery charges. In La Schiazza’s case, prosecutors point to emails in which senior AT&T Illinois officials discussed their strategy for retaining Acevedo in the spring of 2017.
According to the government, La Schiazza said he had no objection to the plan to pay Acevedo $2,500 a month “as long as you are sure we get credit and the box is checked.” An email from AT&T’s director of legislative affairs asked two utility executives if they were “100% sure” the utility “would get credit from the appropriate agencies,” which the government said was a “veiled reference to Madigan.”
“I would hope that as long as we explain our approach to McClain and (Acevedo) gets the money, the ultimate goal will be achieved,” one of the executives wrote back, according to the government.
But the director of legislative affairs responded that “hope” was not enough for La Schiazza: “I don’t think Paul wants this on the basis of ‘hope,'” the email said. “We need to confirm that before we implement this strategy.”
Prosecutors say McClain invented a cover story for hiring Acevedo: The former congressman was to prepare a report on “the political dynamics of the Latino Caucus of the General Assembly and Chicago City Council.” A motion filed in May said the lobbyist who handled the payments to Acevedo was to testify in court that the reasoning was completely fabricated “and merely provided cover for AT&T in case the company ever needed to explain why (Acevedo) was hired.”
The lobbyist, Tom Cullen, was a longtime Madigan associate whose name appeared on handwritten notes presented in the ComEd trial last year that McClain had referred to as the “Magic Lobbying List” in an email printout the government seized during a raid on his home in 2019.
Read more: Jurors see Madigan’s ‘magic list’ that FBI agents seized during 2019 raids
Cullen, who has not been charged, also testified last summer at the trial of Madigan’s longtime chief of staff, Tim Mapes. Mapes was found guilty of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury about his knowledge of the friendship between Madigan and McClain.
Cullen is expected to testify, according to federal authorities, that “it was never really expected that (Acevedo) would work for (Cullen) or AT&T” and that he “never even asked for a contract.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that covers state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and television stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and the Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
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Hannah Meisel
Hannah has been covering Illinois government and politics since 2014 and has since worked for a variety of media outlets, from NPR affiliate stations to a startup newsletter. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I’s Springfield campus, where she earned an MA in the Public Affairs Reporting program and cut her teeth as a reporter at the Capitol.
Other contributions by Hannah Meisel
