Ex-AT&T chief charged with bribery of Madigan goes to jury

CHICAGO (Capitol News Illinois) – On Valentine’s Day 2017, then-AT&T Illinois CEO Paul La Schiazza received some good news: After years of trying to introduce legislation in Springfield that would save the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year, influential Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan had agreed to convene a meeting on the matter.

Two days later, La Schiazza received promising news in the form of a call from Madigan’s closest confidante, a recently retired veteran Statehouse lobbyist named Mike McClain. After the call, La Schiazza sent an e-mail to a small group of his aides, informing them that Madigan had assigned McClain’s bill to AT&T as a “special project.”

“The game is on,” he wrote.

But between those two emails, McClain sent a request to one of AT&T’s in-house lobbyists, inquiring about a “small contract” for former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, who was trying his hand at lobbying after 20 years in the General Assembly.

In late April, prosecutors say, Acevedo agreed to a plea deal under which he would receive $22,500 if he did not do any work as a “consultant” through the end of 2017.

Now, a jury must decide whether La Schiazza, who left AT&T in 2019, intended the contract as a bribe to Madigan to ensure passage of AT&T’s prized legislation, as the feds allege. After spending hours in closing arguments Tuesday, the jury began deliberations in the mid-afternoon and adjourned for the day before 4:15 p.m.

Read more: Prosecutors End Case Against Former AT&T Illinois Boss Charged with Bribery of Madigan | Calculated Bribe or ‘Cuddling Up’ to Madigan? Former AT&T Boss’ Corruption Trial Begins

Before that happened, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sushma Raju told jurors that, contrary to La Schiazza’s defense, making the deal with Acevedo wasn’t just an attempt to build goodwill with an elected official.

“This was not lobbying, this was not goodwill,” she said in her closing speech. “This was a crime and Paul La Schiazza knew it.”

But La Schiazza’s lawyer, Tinos Diamantatos, urged the jury to consider what he said were numerous holes in the government’s theory, attacking prosecutors for failing to prove a direct link between AT&T’s contract with La Schiazza and Madigan himself, let alone a legislative victory for the company.

“This case is full of question marks and it is your duty to acquit Paul,” he said.

In resuming the case Tuesday, government lawyers sharply criticized emails in which the former AT&T chief and the company’s in-house lobbyists discussed the importance of getting “credit” for hiring Acevedo. In one such email, La Schiazza wrote that he “has no objection” to a plan for Acevedo to be paid through one of the company’s longtime outside contract lobbyists, “as long as you’re confident we’ll get credit and that the box is checked.”

However, defense attorneys used their closing arguments to once again emphasize that La Schiazza’s “gaining recognition” ruling continued with the stipulation that AT&T needed “legal consent to engage Eddie in this manner.”

“So ask yourselves,” Diamantatos told the jury, as a snippet of the email appeared on courtroom screens. “Is this someone who is acting corruptly?”

In the summer of 2017, AT&T finally won an exemption from a 1930s-era law that required AT&T to guarantee traditional landline phone service throughout the state as a “carrier of last resort.”

Maintaining the company’s old copper telephone wire system to service its shrinking customer base was a significant expense; one AT&T employee testified that the company sometimes had to scour eBay for replacement parts because the companies that made them had gone out of business decades ago.

Getting rid of the carrier of last resort, or COLR, law was a nationwide project for AT&T, whose executives would rather invest more in new technologies like broadband and wireless services. Until 2017, Illinois and California were the only two states with COLR laws still in effect.

La Schiazza’s defense team maintains that AT&T finally won COLR relief after years of sophisticated lobbying that included building coalition support among lawmakers, outside interest groups and, most importantly, labor unions.

Diamantatos said La Schiazza and his associates were referring to Madigan’s “credit” by “responding” to a request from the speaker’s close confidant, McClain. Moreover, Diamantatos told the jury that the government had not presented any evidence that Madigan had instructed McClain to ask for a job for Acevedo.

Diamantatos cited testimony from retired AT&T lobbyist Steve Selcke, who said under direct questioning from a government lawyer during a hearing last week that he believed Acevedo’s signing of the contract in spring 2017 had nothing to do with the company’s pending COLR legislation.

Under cross-examination by his defence lawyers, Selcke denied that the use of the word “credit” in emails exchanged between him, La Schiazza and other associates was a kind of “code” for a bribe.

“Because you didn’t think you were doing it, did you?” asked La Schiazza’s attorney, Jack Dodds.

“No,” Selcke replied.

Selcke, meanwhile, said AT&T’s government relations team was concerned about having to respond to McClain’s request for a deal with Acevedo so as “not to create confusion” in the relationship with Madigan, and that no one — including La Schiazza — believed the Acevedo deal would change the outcome of the COLR legislation.

But during the government’s rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Chapman told the jury that “what Mr. Selcke believed did not reflect what the defendant believed.”

As for La Schiazza’s reference to the need for legal department approval to make Acevedo a subcontractor, Chapman said AT&T lobbyists did not discuss whether hiring Acevedo could be considered a bribe. Instead, Chapman said, the colleagues considered a technicality about whether Acevedo could not register as a lobbyist if he was considered a “consultant” but would be paid under a registered lobbyist agreement.

That lobbyist, Tom Cullen, also testified in the case, telling prosecutors that he never expected Acevedo to do any work. Both he and Selcke described a meeting in which Acevedo was offered $2,500 a month for a nine-month contract with AT&T in which he would be responsible for writing a report on the political dynamics of Latino caucuses in both the Illinois General Assembly and the Chicago City Council.

Acevedo initially rejected the offer and angrily ended the meeting. But the next day he agreed to a plea deal after prosecutors said McClain convinced him to do so.

Read more: AT&T lobbyists detail controversial meeting with Madigan ally in bribery trial | Former AT&T lobbyist takes to the witness stand to describe how Madigan ally landed $22,500 contract

“I suspect the change in tone came as a result of the conversation with Eddie,” one AT&T lobbyist wrote in an email response to an ongoing government relations team discussion of the meeting. “The type of behavior on display today would not have been to his liking.”

And although Acevedo didn’t accept AT&T’s offer until late April 2017, internal company records show that La Schiazza had already signed off on increasing Cullen’s monthly salary so that Cullen could pay Acevedo in line with his contract. And other emails show that AT&T lobbyists who oversaw the company’s outside lobbying team asked for the change in early April—a week after La Schiazza allegedly received a call from McClain about it.

“He accepted the offer on April 28 and collected a check for a month he didn’t even know he had a job,” Raju said of Acevedo.

After La Schiazza and in-house lobbyists discussed via email the sensitive political issues surrounding contracting directly with Acevedo as a lobbyist, La Schiazza suggested finding an alternative job for the retiring House member at AT&T, including some role in licensing or public safety.

“This is not a normal discussion that a company would have when hiring an employee,” Raju said. “The defendant was not at all concerned about what Eddie Acevedo brought to the table.”

Diamantatos, however, maintained that the agreement with Acevedo was “legal” and it did not matter whether Acevedo’s ultimate performance of the agreement was “good, bad, great or something in between” because bribery law excludes “fair wages, salaries, fees or other compensation” from the definition of a “thing of value” necessary to pay a bribe.

But Chapman said Diamantos’s suggestion “should insult the intelligence” of everyone in the courtroom.

“There was nothing bona fide or normal about it,” Chapman said of Acevedo’s employment agreement. “It was an illusion.”

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