Calculated bribe or ‘kiss up’ to Madigan? Corruption trial kicks off for former AT&T boss

CHICAGO – As the federal corruption trial of former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza formally kicked off on Wednesday, prosecutors and defense attorneys painted two very different pictures of a political hire the telecom giant made in 2017.

La Schiazza is accused of bribing former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan – a politician he described as “all-powerful” and “King Madigan” in email snippets shown to the jury – in exchange for the passage of legislation that was important to AT&T.

But the alleged bribe was “more sophisticated” than an envelope of cash, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Mower told the jury in his opening statement; it involved AT&T offering a nine-month do-nothing lobbying gig worth $22,500 to Madigan’s political ally.

“This is a case about a corporate executive paying off the most powerful politician in Illinois to help pass his company’s most prized piece of legislation,” Mower said, laying out the charges to the jury.

But attorneys for La Schiazza said their client was collateral damage in the feds’ decadelong investigation targeting Madigan, and that the government was misrepresenting how AT&T contracted former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo in 2017.

“Were they trying to be in Madigan’s good graces? To put it bluntly, were they trying to kiss up to him? Absolutely,” La Schiazza’s attorney Jack Dodds told the jury in opening statements Wednesday. “Did they hire him because they were trying to bribe him (Madigan)? … Absolutely not.”

Dodds said La Schiazza’s defense case will prove AT&T was merely engaging in good lobbying practices and that his client was just being “responsive” to a request that came from Madigan’s orbit and contracted with Acevedo in order to build “goodwill” with the speaker.

La Schiazza’s lawyers do not dispute that AT&T found money to pay Acevedo at the suggestion of Madigan’s close confidant Mike McClain, a longtime Springfield lobbyist who’d only recently retired when the events central to the case took place.

McClain’s and Madigan’s close relationship, which stretches back to the 1970s when they were young legislators together, is central to the government’s case just as it’s been to two related cases prosecutors took to trial last year. McClain has already been convicted on similar bribery charges at issue in the AT&T case and is Madigan’s co-defendant in a bribery and racketeering trial scheduled for next month.

The jury on Wednesday was introduced to both Madigan and McClain via their driver’s license photos, blown up on TV and computer monitors in the courtroom. Over the next few weeks, jurors will be told dozens of times through many witnesses and exhibits about the pair’s close friendship, including how McClain viewed himself as an “agent” of the speaker.

Toward the end of testimony Wednesday, prosecutors introduced a late 2016 letter from McClain to Madigan telling the speaker of McClain’s decision to step down from lobbying. The letter pledges an undying loyalty to Madigan and refers to the speaker as McClain’s “real client.”

“At the end of the day I am at the bridge with my musket standing with and for the Madigan family,” McClain wrote, adding a promise that he’d “never leave your side.”

Prosecutors argued that La Schiazza was well aware of the connection between McClain and Madigan, using their opening statement to show the jury snippets of emails in which the utility’s former head expressed willingness to give a lobbying contract to Acevedo provided the utility would “get credit and the box checked.”

Acevedo, who’d served in the Illinois House for 20 years before leaving elected office to lobby, was not AT&T’s first choice for a contract lobbyist, Mower told the jury, describing him as “disagreeable, drank too much, talked too much, and was generally despised by Republicans in Springfield.”

But La Schiazza approved Acevedo’s contract anyway, Mower said, because he “didn’t want to rock the boat.”

“He wasn’t going to leave anything to chance” and ruin AT&T’s “best chance” to pass the legislation it had spent years fighting for, Mower said.

AT&T wanted out from under a longstanding state law that obligated the utility to provide landline service to any customer who wanted it in Illinois. By 2010, many states began doing away with similar “carrier of last resort” laws for telecommunications companies, and AT&T Illinois was making the case that maintaining the aging system of copper wires was becoming prohibitively expensive and preventing the company from making investments in new technology like cellular and internet service.

The company had made a couple unsuccessful bids to the General Assembly but by 2017 hadn’t made much progress. But, Mower alleged, that all changed once Acevedo got his contract.

“Lo and behold, soon after the money started flowing to Acevedo, AT&T’s COLR relief bill finally passed,” he said, using the acronym for “carrier of last resort.”

But Dodds said the feds had the story wrong, and that Acevedo’s contract was nothing but the “blink of an eye” when compared with AT&T’s complex and multi-year lobbying strategy. In his opening statement, he showed the jury snippets of emails in which La Schiazza expressed doubt about the legislation’s chances for passage up until the very end. But he also made the case that by 2015, AT&T’s lobbying strategy had begun to work, showing an email in which La Schiazza wrote that “the speaker is clearly beginning to understand” that technological changes would make AT&T’s request “inevitable.”

The jury on Wednesday also heard from two former state representatives who laid out both the basics of Springfield’s legislative process and the powerful positions Madigan held within the world of Illinois politics.

Thursday’s testimony will include one of AT&T’s former internal lobbyists along with an employee of the utility.

Trial continues at 9 a.m. Thursday.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.