Feds set to rest case in Sen. Emil Jones III red-light camera bribery trial

CHICAGO – On a still-warm early fall morning in September 2019, federal agents walked into the Illinois Capitol building in Springfield and left with boxes of evidence collected from the legislative office of then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago. Roughly 200 miles north, more agents executed search warrants on Sandoval’s home on Chicago’s Southwest Side and his district office in the nearby suburb of Cicero.

But before word of the public raids made the rounds on social media and into early news reports, Sandoval’s colleague, State Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, got a knock on his door at his home on the South Side of Chicago. At first, someone who identified himself as Jones’ cousin told the two FBI agents that the senator wasn’t home – but a little while later recanted the lie and invited them back in from their car.

“How you all doing?” Jones asked the agents, to which FBI Special Agent Timothy O’Brien responded, “Good, good good. How are you?”

“Well, the FBI is at my door, so,” Jones replied with a small laugh.

Nearly six years later, O’Brien took the witness stand Monday afternoon in a Chicago federal courtroom with Jones about 30 feet away flanked by defense attorneys as the lawmaker’s corruption trial nears its end. In the final 20 minutes of testimony before the jury was sent home for the day, prosecutors played the first few moments of the secretly recorded interview with Jones.

The pair of agents can be heard in the 2019 recording telling Jones that they were investigating Sandoval and wanted to ask him some questions. But they didn’t tell Jones that he was also a target of their widespread probe.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri asked O’Brien on Monday why he didn’t tell Jones that information, the agent said that if he’d come right out and said it, there was a “potential that he would not speak with us.”

“And did he ask you whether he was under investigation?” Kolluri asked.

“He did not,” O’Brien said.

Jurors will hear the remainder of the roughly 40-minute interview on Tuesday, during which prosecutors allege Jones lied to O’Brien and his partner – the basis for one of the three charges Jones faces.

The feds also allege Jones agreed to accept bribes from red-light camera entrepreneur-turned-FBI cooperator Omar Maani in exchange for changing a piece of legislation he’d proposed in early 2019 that Maani worried could harm his industry.

Prosecutors say it doesn’t matter that Jones never received the $5,000 from Maani, nor did he ever narrow the legislation in the way that Maani asked for. The only agreement that did come to fruition was a job – or at least several weeks’ worth of payments from Maani – for Jones’ former intern, Christopher Katz.

The jury last week heard Maani quantify the number of people he made secret recordings of as “dozens and dozens and dozens” in the roughly 20 months he was an undercover FBI cooperator beginning in January 2018 until the public raids on Sandoval and others on Sept. 24, 2019.

FBI Special Agent Kelly Shanahan on Monday reiterated that Sandoval was one of the public officials Maani helped the government to charge; the senator pleaded guilty in early 2020 after he began cooperating with the feds’ ongoing investigation. In fact, Shanahan felt moved to “pay my respects” at Sandoval’s funeral after he died in December 2020 from COVID-19 complications. At the time, Shanahan had been working with Sandoval for about a year and said that while she and the two IRS agents who attended the funeral weren’t invited, the late senator’s wife and daughters thanked her for coming.

But Shanahan also revealed Monday that the FBI gave Maani about $75,000 to give to Sandoval during the course of Maani’s cooperation. While Maani had been giving Sandoval perks like cigars and meals for years before the feds approached him, he began giving Sandoval cash after January 2018.

The bribes were meant to buy Sandoval’s continued protection of the red-light camera industry as the chair of the Illinois Senate Transportation Committee. But they were also an exchange for the senator’s help intervening when the Illinois Department of Transportation opposed the approval of red-light camera installations proposed by certain suburbs.

At a June 2019 dinner meant to facilitate a relationship between Maani and Jones, Sandoval demonstrated his own close friendship with Maani, inviting Jones into the circle.

“I’m glad you came, Emil,” Sandoval said. “Omar wants to be your friend.”

After Jones left the Oak Brook steakhouse that night, Maani gave Sandoval his latest installment of cash, which had been in his pocket throughout the hourslong dinner.

Jones didn’t catch the FBI’s attention until March 2019 – more than a year into Maani’s cooperation with the government, after Maani brought up Jones’ newly proposed legislation to Sandoval, who apparently suggested brokering a meeting. Shanahan on Friday said that the FBI “found it interesting” that Jones, “who had filed legislation on red-light cameras,” would be willing to meet with Maani, a co-owner of a red-light camera company.

Maani’s cooperation also helped the feds nab a handful of other public officials who accepted bribes, including mayors of small suburbs just southwest of Chicago who were convinced to pursue red-light cameras from Maani’s company, SafeSpeed.

According to Shanahan, some of those mayors also accepted both cash and other gifts from Maani.

Jones’ defense lawyers jumped on the disparity between what those officials asked for and received versus Jones’ experience with Maani. Attorney Vic Henderson asked Shanahan whether Jones got “any cigars” or “Any tickets to events? Any flights to faraway places?”

“No,” Shanahan said to all three.

“He got a steak, correct?” Henderson asked.

“Yes,” Shanahan said.

“And he got a lemonade,” Henderson stated.

“I believe that’s what he had,” Shanahan replied.

Henderson also asked Shanahan why the FBI didn’t give Maani cash to try to entice Jones at the June dinner, to which Shanahan replied that she didn’t “believe there would’ve been a basis to do that.”

“This was the first time Omar was having dinner with him,” she said of Jones.

“So you didn’t believe he would’ve taken any money in June?” Henderson asked.

“I don’t know that,” Shanahan said. “It was a first meeting.”

But a few weeks later in July 2019, as Maani treated Jones to dinner at the senator’s favorite steakhouse, money did come up as Maani pushed Jones to name a dollar amount that he could contribute to an upcoming campaign fundraiser. After a few minutes of demurring – and chewing his wagyu beef filet – Jones finally acquiesced.

“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” the senator said.

“Done,” Maani replied.

“But most importantly, I have an intern working in my office,” Jones told Maani. “And I’m trying to find him another job, another part-time job.”

It turned out that the intern, Christopher Katz, hadn’t worked for Jones for a year at that point. Prosecutors on Friday showed the jury late-night texts between the two, with Jones asking Katz – more than 15 years his junior – “I want to see u after” Katz was finished at a strip club.

Jones’ attorney Vic Henderson on Monday pushed Shanahan to agree with his contention that the case was “not about a relationship between the senator and Chris,” but was quickly admonished by U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood to move from an argumentative stance and to just “ask questions to get evidence.”

Maani quickly agreed to hire Katz – and the details were hammered out during yet another dinner between Jones and Maani in August 2019. It was then that Maani told Jones that he didn’t want to raise any suspicions within SafeSpeed about someone connected to Jones getting hired at the company, given Jones’ documented history as not being friendly to the red-light camera industry.

Instead, Maani said he’d hire Katz directly. In a phone call a few days later, Maani told Jones that he didn’t have any work for Katz right away but would put him on his payroll anyway.

“I just wanted to make sure that he’s the type of kid that, you know, when he gets a check and he’s not doing anything right away, that he’s, you know, he’s not gonna be spooked by that,” Maani said on the wiretapped call. “He’s not gonna be weird and stuff. … Is he – would he be cool with that for a while? I mean, does he get it? Does he understand this?”

“Yeah, but um, make sure we find him some work,” Jones replied.

But Maani never gave Katz any assignments. The two never even met before Maani abruptly stopped paying Katz after the investigation went public on Sept. 24, 2019, after the raids on Sandoval and other suburban officials.

In all, Katz collected $1,800 total from six weekly payments, which he testified last week helped him pay for school at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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