CHICAGO — After nine weeks of prosecution witnesses, defense attorneys in the blockbuster corruption trial of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan and his longtime confidante Michael McClain began presenting their case to jurors Wednesday by calling someone who, until quite recently, was expected to testify for the government.

That witness was Stephen Selcke, a retired AT&T Illinois government affairs officer who said Wednesday he knew of no explicit arrangement to hire former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, a Madigan ally, in exchange for the speaker’s support of key legislation the telecommunications giant wanted in Springfield.

On cross-examination, though, Selcke repeatedly acknowledged that AT&T put Acevedo on a $2,500-a-month subcontract solely because McClain, who was known to be an emissary for Madigan, asked them to, and not doing so might have risked irritating the speaker’s office.

Whether that legally qualifies as a bribe will soon be up to jurors.

Prosecutors formally rested their case in chief early Wednesday after 30 days of testimony that stretched over three months. They presented about 150 wiretapped calls and undercover video recordings and put more than 50 witnesses on the stand, including two men who wore wires for the FBI: former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez and, perhaps most memorably, ex-Ald. Daniel Solis.

Defense attorneys are likely to call far fewer witnesses, but with a break next week for the Christmas holiday, it appears the defense phase of the trial will stretch into the new year. Prosecutors have indicated they will call at least one witness in rebuttal.

The alleged scheme by AT&T to bribe Madigan makes up just one of the 23 counts of the indictment, but it has taken up a good portion of the last two weeks of testimony.

Wednesday’s focus was almost entirely on Selcke, who became involved in talks regarding a request from McClain in 2017 to get a contract for Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat who had served as Madigan’s assistant majority leader before going into lobbying.

The request came as AT&T was pushing key legislation to end mandated landline service, commonly referred to by the acronym COLR, which the company had been pining for since at least 2011 and stood to save the company tens of millions of dollars in maintenance of the old copper wire system.

After years of pushback from Madigan’s office, AT&T finally got an overture from the speaker for a face-to-face meeting on COLR on Feb. 14, 2017, as the spring session was getting underway, according to trial testimony.

That same day, McClain emailed Selcke’s government affairs associate, Bob Barry, with a request. “BOB, is there even a small contract for Eddie Acevedo?” according to evidence shown to the jury.

Selcke, who served as a legislative liaison under two Republican governors and retired as a lobbyist in 2019, testified in a previous Madigan-adjacent trial about the Acevedo contract and was on the prosecution witness list until prosecutors announced last week they would not have him testify after all.

Meanwhile, it was not hard to see why the defense wanted the jury to hear from Selcke. He told the jury in the bribery trial of his former boss, then-AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza, that he did not believe the company intended an act of bribery when they agreed to pay Acevedo, even though he was not required to do any work.

La Schiazza’s trial ended in a rare mistrial in September after the jury deadlocked 11-1 to convict. It still has not been decided when, or if, he will be retried.

Selcke largely reiterated his position on the stand Wednesday, when he was asked by McClain attorney John Mitchell whether McClain ever threatened that Madigan would kill their legislation if Acevedo wasn’t hired.

“No, I’m not aware of that ever happening,” Selcke said.

“Did Mike McClain ever promise that if AT&T offered a job to Eddie Acevedo, Madigan would pass the COLR bill?” Mitchell asked.

“No,” Selcke said.

Selcke said the goal all along was to be able to go back to McClain and say they’d found something for Acevedo to do so they could “check the box” — as La Schiazza put it in an email — and get credit for being responsive.

Selcke also said, to his knowledge, no one told Acevedo that his contract would not require actual work. And while Selcke said he personally would not have sought to hire Acevedo, he acknowledged that as a former leader of the House Latino Caucus, Acevedo did bring some things to the table.

“I think it depended on what Eddie was asked to do, as to whether or not he could be an asset or not,” Selcke said.

AT&T decided to hire Acevedo to write a report on Latino members of the General Assembly as well as the Chicago City Council, Selcke testified.

There has been no testimony that Acevedo ever wrote the report. An FBI case agent testified on Tuesday that a lengthy search of subpoenaed AT&T materials yielded no evidence of work done by Acevedo. And Tom Cullen, an external lobbyist for AT&T, told jurors this week he had never seen a report — and Acevedo’s assignment was sort of an inside joke among AT&T brass.

“It was not viewed as some report that was worth anything, really,” Cullen said. “It was just kind of a joke.”

Selcke did seem to contradict some of the testimony earlier this week from Acevedo himself, who told the jury that as part of his work for AT&T he often met with Selcke at the rail of the Capitol and gave him updates on meetings he’d attended.

Selcke, however, testified that after Acevedo was hired, he received no updates from anyone on what work he was doing.

In his cross-examination, Madigan attorney Todd Pugh drilled down on AT&T’s motivations for hiring Acevedo.

While Acevedo’s hiring didn’t affect AT&T’s overall obligation to try and get votes for the bill, “we didn’t want to be in a position of rocking the boat with the speaker’s office,” Selcke testified.

“Mr. McClain never told you that the boat was going to be rocked, did he?” Pugh asked.

“No,” Selcke answered.

“You didn’t even know there was a boat?”

“No, we knew there was a boat,” Selcke said. “There was a boat. The boat being the speaker’s office.”

Prosecutors seized on that, asking repeatedly whether AT&T jumped to fulfill McClain’s request because if they didn’t, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz put it, “Speaker Madigan might erect an impediment to AT&T legislation moving forward.”

“If you didn’t hire Mr. Acevedo, that might upset Speaker Madigan?” she asked.

“Again, we don’t know all the decision points, but that was a concern that it might trigger a negative reaction from the speaker’s office,” Selcke said. “It was a concern, yes.”

“And you didn’t want to risk a negative reaction that might stall an AT&T bill?” Schwartz asked.

“Well, we wanted to elicit positive reactions, not negative,” Selcke said.

Selcke also testified about Acevedo’s tendency to be overly partisan, which alienated many Republicans, as well as his extracurricular behavior that was the cause of many whispers around the Capitol.

“Eddie, after session, tended to go out in Springfield and occasionally would have too much to drink, and when he had too much to drink he could become belligerent and to a degree loose-lipped,” Selcke said.

Schwartz asked if being belligerent and loose-lipped were bad traits for a lobbyist or consultant.

“I agree,” Selcke said.

Schwartz also revealed in her questioning that McClain had previously asked AT&T to expand two other consulting contracts, including one for former state Rep. Annazette Collins, another ally of the speaker who had gone into lobbying.

Schwartz was about to show the jury an exhibit pertaining to Collins — who was convicted of tax fraud related to the Madigan probe and is currently serving a one-year term in prison — but Pugh objected.

After a lengthy sidebar discussion, the judge told the jury the exhibit was not being admitted at that time.

Just before the lunch break, while still on questioning from McClain’s attorneys, Selcke testified about the morning the FBI came to his door in 2019. It was 6:30 a.m. and he was still sleeping, he said.

“My wife answered the door. She came back and told me, ‘Hey, the FBI is here to talk to you,'” Selcke said, chuckling. “I thought she was kidding. But she wasn’t.”

Many members of the jury laughed along with Selcke at his account.

Selcke has not been charged. He was eventually given a letter of immunity from the U.S. attorney’s office and cannot be charged for anything he says on the witness stand, as long as he tells the truth.

His testimony is scheduled to resume Thursday morning.

Madigan, 82, of Chicago, who served for decades as speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the state Democratic Party, faces racketeering charges alleging he ran his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise.

He is charged alongside McClain, 77, a former ComEd contract lobbyist from downstate Quincy. Both men have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

_____

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.