Illinois Sen. Emil Jones III says he never struck a deal to have a red-light camera executive gather $5,000 for his campaign, even though the FBI caught Jones on camera telling him, “If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good.”
That means “anywhere between zero and five thousand,” Jones told a federal jury Wednesday.
The South Side Democrat said he had no interest in abolishing red-light cameras, either. So when he told Omar Maani that he’d protect him from then-state Rep. David McSweeney — who wanted to get rid of the cameras — Jones said he planned on “doing what I always was doing.”
Finally, Jones insisted that when he tried to convince Maani to hire a former intern of Jones’, it wasn’t part of a deal to alter legislation that Maani feared in Springfield.
“I didn’t think of it as that,” Jones testified Wednesday. “The bill was dead.”
The veteran senator has spent more than five hours on the witness stand, Tuesday and Wednesday, fighting for his freedom and his career in a trial that is suddenly threatening to spill into next week, given Jones’ decision to take the stand.
So far, he’s only been questioned by his own defense attorney. But prosecutors will likely get a chance to cross-examine him Thursday. And they told U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood they might want to call additional witnesses once Jones’ lawyers are done taking their turn.
Prosecutors say Jones agreed to protect Maani in the Illinois Senate in exchange for $5,000 and a job for Jones’ ex-intern, who was paid $1,800 by Maani even though he did no work. Jones filed a bill in February 2019 that could have prompted a statewide study of red-light cameras. Maani, the red-light camera executive, saw it as bad for business.
But by then, Maani was working for the FBI. Agents confronted him in January 2018 and convinced him to wear a wire on politicians like Jones. Maani recorded dinners the men shared at Steak 48 in downtown Chicago, and he later struck a deal with prosecutors that saved him from a conviction despite “benefits” he paid to public officials across the suburbs.
Jones used his testimony Wednesday to portray himself as being at the center of a yearslong fight to reform red-light cameras in Illinois. He told jurors how he had no choice but to work with Maani and then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval.
The senator described Sandoval to jurors as a “bully” and Maani as a “used car salesman.” Sandoval pleaded guilty to his own corruption charges in 2020 but died later that year.
Jones also explained his relationship with the former intern, Christopher Katz, insisting he’d known Katz and his mother for “several years.”
Jones and Katz traded late-night text messages in July 2019, in which Katz asked Jones for money and told him he was going to a strip club. Jones told him by text, “I want to hang out with u” and “I want to see u after.”
Jones was 41 at the time, and Katz was 23.
“The text messages that folks are talking about, we were literally at an all-day event that we go to every year,” Jones testified. “That event did not end until probably around 9 o’clock in the evening. It was a holiday weekend. Fourth of July weekend.
“I ended up going to another party with one of my colleagues, a representative. Chris went somewhere else.”
Turning to red-light cameras, Jones explained how he kept filing bills over the years to trigger a study of them across the state. He said they always wound up in the Transportation Committee led by Sandoval, who Jones said “ran his committee like no other.”
“We had no discussion,” Jones said. “We had no witness testimony.”
Jones said Sandoval kept dumping Jones’ bills into a subcommittee where they’d die. Eventually, Jones sought help from then-Senate President John Cullerton, who intervened.
Though Jones worked with McSweeney, a Republican from the northwest suburbs, Jones said they had different goals. While McSweeney wanted to abolish red-light cameras, Jones said he simply wanted the city of Chicago to play by the same rules as the suburbs.
Sandoval eventually told him “these are the folks in opposition to your bill, and if you want to get it passed, you’re going to have to convince them,” Jones explained.
So, Jones soon found himself at dinner with Sandoval and Maani at Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse in Oak Brook.
Defense attorney Victor Henderson asked Jones about a joke he cracked there after Sandoval told the men he’d once studied to be a priest. At the dinner, Jones responded by saying, “They did say, politicians and clergyman, priests — they’re all crooked. Damn.”
In court, Jones explained that “I had learned at that meeting that Sen. Sandoval had once upon a time wanted to be a priest. And it was shocking to me … I’m Catholic. And he doesn’t seem like a suitable priest to me.”
Jones and Maani wound up meeting again twice, without Sandoval, at Steak 48. Henderson described the restaurant in court Wednesday as the one “getting all the press.”
“I frequent that restaurant quite often,” Jones testified. “I love their steaks. I go there all the time.”
Jones testified that he “felt something was strange” about Maani, like the businessman was “trying to buy me off.” But he said he continued the meetings because of Sandoval’s instruction.
During their first dinner together, on July 17, 2019, Maani asked how much he could raise for Jones “in an ideal world.” Jones eventually said, “If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good.”
In court, Henderson asked, “The five grand that you’re talking about — raise it for whom?”
“Friends of Emil Jones III,” Jones replied.
“Your campaign?” Henderson asked.
“Yes,” Jones said.
The senator also asked for a job for Katz during that dinner. Jones testified that he did so after seeing several college students working for Maani’s company at the time, SafeSpeed, and he thought it’d be a good fit.
SafeSpeed is not accused of wrongdoing, and executives there insist Maani was a rogue actor.
During their later meeting, on Aug. 8, 2019, Maani told Jones he’d help Katz “100%.”
“And like I said before,” Maani added, “if you could just help me out with the, ah, the study to make it to Chicago.”
“You’re good,” Jones told him.
But Jones testified in court that his response was simply “how I speak.”
The senator told jurors he wanted Katz to have a legitimate job, where he’d work for a paycheck.
“Not an under-the-table job.”