Jones spends all day Wednesday on the witness stand in his federal bribery trial
By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO — Red-light camera entrepreneur Omar Maani made a point of not saying much during an April 2019 meeting with state Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, letting his co-founder and lobbyists for his company SafeSpeed do most of the talking.
But as they dined at a suburban steakhouse two months later, Maani told Jones that he didn’t say “a f—— word the whole time” at their previous meeting because he preferred to discuss business “one-on-one or with an intimate group.”
He then proceeded to talk so much, Jones left the dinner feeling like he’d spent his evening with “a used-car salesman,” the senator told a jury Wednesday as he testified in his own defense at his federal corruption trial.
“He just — he talked a lot,” Jones said after his attorney, Vic Henderson, asked what the senator meant. “He repeated himself over and over again and … I don’t know, just like I said, he reminded me of a used-car salesman.”
Read more: Sen. Emil Jones III takes witness stand in his own defense at federal corruption trial
But instead of a clunker, Maani was trying to sell Jones on the idea of changing legislation he’d introduced in Springfield that called for a statewide study on red-light camera systems. The senator had sponsored a few similar bills in the past, and though they hadn’t gotten close to becoming law, Maani was worried that a study would eventually lead to a ban on the technology, threatening his business.
A few months after that June 2019 dinner, Jones told FBI agents he’d felt uncomfortable as Maani and his colleague, then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago, hinted at benefits Sandoval received from Maani.
As it turned out, Sandoval received approximately $75,000 in cash from Maani — but only because Maani was cooperating with the FBI, which provided him with the money. As the trio ate their meals, Maani had the latest installment sitting in his jacket pocket.
But Jones didn’t know that yet. When Sandoval turned to Jones during their dinner and told him that Maani “wants to be your friend,” though, he started getting the picture.
“So what did you think he meant by, ‘He wants you to be his friend?’” FBI Special Agent Nijika Rustagi asked Jones as she and her partner interviewed him in his home on Sept. 24, 2019.
“Well, two things,” the senator answered. “One, you know, he wants to donate to my campaign, or two, he wants to, you know, give me cash.”
‘That’s why I never called him back’
Jones didn’t make any specific promises at the dinner, but did repeat what he’d said when he visited SafeSpeed’s offices in April: he’d been hearing fewer complaints about red-light cameras from his constituents lately, and believed that Chicago’s red-light camera program was more of a problem than systems in the suburbs, where SafeSpeed operated.
The senator was willing to limit his legislation to only study red-light cameras in Chicago, but he still wanted a statewide look at the systems. And though he was wary of both Maani and Sandoval, Jones said he believed he had to work with them to get his bill passed by negotiating something they all could live with, he testified Wednesday.
When Jones and Maani met for another dinner the following month, Maani cut to the chase.
“So let me ask you this: In an ideal world, how much would you want me to come up with or raise or what have you for it?” Maani asked of Jones’ upcoming fundraiser. “You tell me a number.”
“I don’t give folks numbers,” Jones said after a beat. “Just whatever you can raise for me, that’d be nice. I’m not greedy.”
But Maani pressed him, telling the senator he wanted to “meet expectations.” Eventually, between bites of wagyu steak, Jones acquiesced.
“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” the senator said. “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.”
Prosecutors pinpointed this moment in Maani’s secretly recorded footage of his and Jones’ July 17, 2019, dinner as the instant Jones named his price for a bribe to change his legislation — the basis for two of the charges the senator is fighting in court.
The third count alleges Jones lied to the FBI about the purported bribes on another secret recording played for the jury Tuesday. When the agents arrived at Jones’ home on Chicago’s far South Side on that September morning, they told him they were investigating Sandoval, which was true; a host of other federal agents would execute search warrants on the senator’s offices and home later that day.
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But they didn’t tell Jones that he was also under investigation.
During the interview, FBI Special Agent Timothy O’Brien asked Jones whether Maani directly propositioned him for a bribe.
“Did Omar say like, ‘Hey, you know, what’s it gonna take?’” O’Brien asked. “Did you guys come up with an amount that he was going to donate for a fundraiser or anything like that?”
“No, no, no,” Jones answered. “He just asked, ‘How much do you want me to raise?’ I said, “Whatever you want to raise. Whatever you can do, you know?’”
From the witness stand Wednesday — more than 5 ½ years later — the senator explained why he told the agents that he and Maani hadn’t come up with a number.
“Because we didn’t,” Jones said. “When I said to him, ‘You can raise me five grand,’ that’s anywhere between zero and five thousand.”
After Jones denied settling on a number with Maani, the agents told him they knew he suggested $5,000 to Maani and they knew “about those conversations you had with Sandoval about how much.” Jones’ former colleague began cooperating with the government and pleaded guilty to bribery and tax fraud but can’t be called for testimony in Jones’ trial because he died in late 2020.
While the money never materialized and Jones never ended up amending his legislation according to Maani’s wishes, prosecutors say that doesn’t matter. The senator’s former intern, then-23-year-old Christopher Katz, did end up getting paid by Maani for a six-week period before the FBI’s red-light camera probe went public with their raids the same day O’Brien and Rustagi showed up to Jones’ house.
Jones acknowledged to the agents that he knew Maani was suggesting something illegal when he repeatedly told the senator that he’d like to come up with a “creative” way to contribute the $5,000 but emphasized that he was never going to accept money from Maani.
“That’s why I never called him back,” the senator told the agents.
“But yet he hired your intern, which could be construed that he’s helping you out,” O’Brien said.
“Could it?” Jones asked. “I mean, I do that all the time. You know, recommend people who are asking for jobs.”
On Wednesday, the senator explained that he’d answered O’Brien’s question with another question “because I didn’t look at it that way — as him (Maani) hiring my intern as a benefit to me.”
‘My only concern was getting him a job’
A little later in the FBI interview, Jones acknowledged that Maani told him the previous month that he’d put Katz on his payroll even though he didn’t have any work for him to do. He thought Maani had essentially hired Katz “as his personal assistant.”
“Because you asked him to,” Rustagi said.
“Yeah, but not in exchange for — ” Jones replied before Rustagi cut him off, telling the senator that she knew what he and Maani talked about at their July dinner at Steak 48, Jones’ favorite Chicago steakhouse.
On Wednesday, Jones tried to explain that moment in hindsight.
“It seemed like she was trying to accuse me of hiring my intern in exchange for changing legislation,” Jones said, adding that the notion was “definitely untrue.”
“Me asking for employment (for Katz) had nothing to do with the legislation,” he said.
The senator explained that as he was making his way to the dinner with Maani, Katz’s mother “called me crying.”
“She really, really needed him to have a job — is there anything I can do to help facilitate him getting a job?” Jones recalled.
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Katz had previously worked two different stints in the senator’s district office, but in the summer of 2019, Jones said he didn’t have room in his budget to hire another intern.
But he remembered that on his April visit to SafeSpeed’s headquarters, he learned the company hired dozens of college students to review red-light camera footage to determine whether a violation occurred and should be sent to the local police chief of the camera’s host municipality for final approval and ticketing.
Jones believed it would be a “good fit” for Katz, and at first Maani agreed. But during another dinner in August 2019, Maani told him that he had reservations about recommending SafeSpeed hire someone connected with Jones.
In testimony last week, Maani told the jury he believed it would have looked “really goofy and concerning that we’re now hiring his intern with someone who’s sponsoring negative legislation against us.”
Instead, Maani told Jones at their second Steak 48 dinner that he’d hire Katz to “work directly for me.”
On Wednesday, Jones said it was “none of my business” that Maani wanted to keep Katz’s job a secret from his colleagues.
“My only concern was getting him a job,” Jones said.
Prosecutors last week showed the jury a series of text messages between Jones and Katz in the summer of 2019, which included Katz requesting spending money from Jones and late-night messages from the much-older senator.
“I want to see u after,” Jones texted Katz at 2:17 a.m. after Katz told Jones he was still at a now-defunct strip club in south suburban Harvey, though the two never met up that night.
Read more: Sen. Jones sent spending money to former intern before getting him job feds say was a bribe
“And these text messages — tell us about your relationship with Chris,” Henderson directed his client Wednesday. “Put it out there.”
“We’re friends,” Jones said of Katz, though he said they don’t talk all the time. He confirmed that they’d been introduced by Katz’s mother, Linda Redd, who testified the same on Tuesday and lives with her son.
“Me and Chris share a passion for cooking,” Jones said. “I get invited over to their house every once in a while.”
Jones’ testimony differed slightly from Katz, who said on the witness stand last week he didn’t consider Jones a friend. And it differed a bit from testimony given by Redd, who said she’d only seen Jones in person “maybe four” times — mostly at parties where they’d dance together to house music, an electronic dance genre born in 1980s Chicago.
On the night of the extended text exchange with Katz, Jones said he and his former intern had run into each other at the Chosen Few Picnic, an annual all-day house music festival on Chicago’s South Side.
“You can dance?” Henderson asked his client.
“I can do a little something,” Jones replied, garnering a smattering of laughter from the courtroom.
The senator will continue his testimony for a third day on Thursday, likely followed by what prosecutors estimate will be at least a few hours of cross-examination.
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