Former AT&T Illinois executive Paul La Schiazza accused of bribing Mike Madigan gets new trial date

Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza will face trial again June 3 after his first trial ended in September with a hung jury, a federal judge said Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman had previously delayed rescheduling La Schiazza's trial, saying he first wanted to hear arguments on whether to acquit La Schiazza. But Gettleman shot down the former utility executive’s long-shot bid for an acquittal last week.

That means La Schiazza still faces charges that he bribed Madigan in 2017 by paying $22,500 to former state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo after Acevedo left the Illinois General Assembly.

Now, Madigan himself is on trial. Gettleman on Thursday told attorneys in La Schiazza's case that putting "some time" between Madigan's trial and a new La Schiazza trial "will be to the benefit of all the parties." Gettleman also referenced the Madigan trial happening five floors below his courtroom, asking attorneys if they planned to call the same witnesses from their first trial.

"I know that in reading the paper — I don't read it that carefully, but you see there have been issues in the Madigan trial that have come up recently regarding witnesses," Gettleman said. "So where do you stand on that?"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sushma Raju told Gettleman they were "not able to definitively state the number of witnesses is going to be different." Both parties said they expected the new trial to last about two weeks.

La Schiazza's attorneys appeared in the Madigan trial courtroom shortly after their hearing.

Jurors in Madigan’s corruption trial have spent the last week or so listening to much of the same testimony presented in La Schiazza’s trial. They also heard from Acevedo — who was not called to the witness stand in the La Schiazza case.

Madigan and his longtime ally, Michael McClain, are on trial for a broader alleged racketeering conspiracy.

The case against La Schiazza is much narrower. At the heart of it is legislation AT&T pushed in 2017 to help the utility end its costly obligation to provide landline telephone service to all Illinois residents. It was known as its Carrier of Last Resort, or COLR, bill.

McClain reached out to AT&T looking for a small contract for Acevedo in February 2017. Then, two days later, McClain told La Schiazza that Madigan had assigned McClain to the COLR legislation as a “special project,” emails show.

The contract for Acevedo suddenly became an urgent issue for La Schiazza more than a month later, on March 28, 2017, when he told his team he “got a call” and wanted them to “move quickly” on Acevedo’s contract.

McClain had a reputation in Springfield as an emissary of Madigan’s. Prosecutors say Acevedo, a veteran Latino politician, was valuable to Madigan because of the growing Latino population in Madigan’s 22nd District. Acevedo wound up serving a six-month prison sentence in 2022 for tax evasion but has not otherwise been charged.

No one at AT&T was particularly impressed with Acevedo in 2017. The longtime lawmaker had a bad reputation, and Republicans threatened to vote against AT&T’s agenda if Acevedo wound up on the utility’s payroll.

So AT&T funneled Acevedo’s money through a firm belonging to lobbyist Tom Cullen. La Schiazza told his staff he had no objection to the arrangement “as long as you are sure we will get credit and the box checked, and of course, we have legal approval to engage Eddie this way.”

The COLR bill became law after the state House and Senate voted around July 1, 2017, to override a veto from then-Gov. Bruce Rauner. Madigan voted in favor of the bill and to override the veto.

Less than two weeks later, on July 12, 2017, La Schiazza was asked by Madigan’s son, Andrew Madigan, to sponsor a nonprofit event “at the suggestion of our good friend Mike McClain.” La Schiazza griped by email to a colleague that “this will be endless.”

He later added, “We are on the friends and family plan now.”

Prosecutors argued that La Schiazza’s comments proved the exchange of Acevedo’s job for passage of the COLR bill, calling the emails an “after-the-fact discussion of what [La Schiazza] did and why he did it.”