Illinois Sen. Emil Jones III can be heard on video suggesting a red-light camera executive raise him $5,000, months after Jones filed a potentially damaging bill in Springfield.
But Jones also told the executive he had one “main thing” — “take care of my intern. That’s it.”
The request from the South Side Democrat to then-SafeSpeed partner Omar Maani amid a pair of dinners at a high-end Chicago steakhouse became a focal point Thursday during Jones’ federal bribery trial. But so did the credibility of Maani, who secretly wore a wire for the FBI.
Defense attorney Joshua Adams used his cross-examination of the feds’ star witness to drag Maani through testimony about a series of bribes Maani paid to other elected officials around Chicago’s suburbs. Adams even suggested Maani ripped off his own mother.
But Maani insisted that he “never, voluntarily, just decided to give [officials] money.
“They always asked me for money,” he said. “They asked for money, and I capitulated, and I agreed to give it to them after they asked me.”
Maani mostly dropped names that have come up before in federal court. But early in the cross-examination, Maani testified that he paid $23,000 to west suburban attorney Michael Del Galdo to show his “appreciation” for Cicero Town President Larry Dominick.
When asked where he paid the money, Maani said “in a McDon—” before he was cut off by an objection from prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood called a sidebar. Afterward, lawyers were careful to remind Maani not to name names.
Dominick and Del Galdo have not been charged with a crime. David Ormsby, a spokesman for Del Galdo Law Group LLC, said in a statement that “any money ever donated to Larry Dominick was reported to the Board of Elections as required by law.”
Meanwhile, it’s Jones who found himself sitting through a second day of testimony in his criminal trial Thursday. Prosecutors say he agreed to protect Maani in the Illinois Senate in exchange for $5,000 and a job for the intern. Jones filed a bill in February 2019 that could have prompted a statewide study of red-light cameras, and Maani saw it as bad for business.
Maani was a principal in the red-light camera company SafeSpeed. He’s admitted giving “benefits” to public officials before agreeing to work with the FBI around January 2018 — and later struck a deal with the feds that spared him from a conviction. No other SafeSpeed executive has been implicated, and the company says he went rogue.
“To be clear, at SafeSpeed, Maani had no office, no credit card and no authorization to hire or fire anyone,” the company said in a statement Thursday. In recordings heard by jurors, Maani told Jones that his colleagues were “goofy” and he didn’t want to involve them in their talks.
During a pair of 2019 dinners recorded by Maani at Steak 48 in Chicago, Maani and Jones discussed how Maani could quietly contribute $5,000 to Jones’ campaign. The senator suggested Maani could sponsor one of his events.
Maani asked during a dinner on Aug. 8, 2019, if “there’s enough stuff for me to cover for five grand?”
Jones started to answer, telling Maani, “You don’t necessarily have to —.” But Maani cut him off and said, “You just tell me. I mean, I don’t care.”
Maani said he’d help Jones’ intern “100%.” He added, “and like I said before, if you could just help me out with the, ah, the study to make it to Chicago.”
“You’re good,” Jones told him.
Maani told Jones, “Anything you could do to help protect me would be great. And I’ll always hook it up. Anything you need, you ask me. I’ll be there.”
“You’re the man,” Jones told him. “You’re the man.”
Maani and Jones spoke again by phone on Aug. 12, 2019. At the direction of the FBI, Maani told Jones he didn’t actually have any work for the intern to do.
“I don’t have, like, a lot of work, you know, or really any work right now for [the intern] to do,” Maani told Jones. “But I’m gonna put him on my payroll … obviously for you helping me out with all this stuff.”
Jones initially told Maani to “make sure we find him some work.” But Maani said he wanted to know if the intern would be “spooked” when he got a check for doing no work.
“He’ll be all good?” Maani said. “OK, cool.”
“Yeah,” Jones said. “And if you have any issues with him, you know, which I know you’re not, you know, pick up the phone.”
Maani told the jury he wound up paying the intern $1,800.
Adams used his cross-examination to stress that Jones’ “main concern” was helping the intern — and “not the $5,000.” Adams also asked Maani, “How many times did the FBI give you money to give to targets of your investigation?”
The attorney asked if it happened “more than 10” times? Maani said, “maybe.”
“You never gave Mr. Jones any money, right?” Adams asked.
“I never gave him any money,” Maani said.
Adams also asked Maani about money he paid to former Crestwood Mayor Louis Presta, who went to prison over a Maani bribe. Adams asked if Maani used his mother’s bank account to pay Presta.
“I believe so,” Maani replied.
“You told Mr. Presta that your mother doesn’t pay attention to her checkbook, do you remember that?” Adams asked.
“I vaguely remember that,” Maani replied.
Adams asked Maani if he paid his mother back.
But Maani said he couldn’t recall.