A Chicago businessman attempted to corrupt the political process by paying off two sitting state legislators for legislation beneficial to his sweepstakes gaming company, and calling it anything other than bribery was putting “lipstick on a pig,” a federal prosecutor told a jury Wednesday.

Attorneys for James Weiss, though, said he made a legal effort to wade into the “dirty” politics of Springfield and counteract big-money video gaming competitors who already had the politicians in their pocket.

“This is a dirty place where the rules seem to be gray, where a contribution can be considered a bribe, a bribe a contribution,” defense attorney Ilia Usharovich told the jury. “It is all messed up.”

The contrasting portrayals came during closing arguments in the Weiss’ bribery trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where he is accused of agreeing in 2019 to pay monthly $2,500 bribes to then-state Rep. Luis Arroyo and ex-state Sen. Terry Link to get legislation on sweepstakes machines passed.

Unbeknownst to both Arroyo and Weiss was that Link, a Vernon Hills Democrat, was cooperating with the FBI, hoping for a break on his own federal tax conviction in exchange for his cooperation.

Link testified over two days beginning last week about his undercover role, including wearing a hidden wire at meetings with Arroyo and Weiss at a North Shore Wendy’s and Skokie pancake house.

Weiss, 44, who is the son-in-law of former Cook County Democratic boss Joseph Berrios, is charged in a superseding indictment filed in October 2020 with honest services wire fraud, mail fraud and lying to the FBI. He has pleaded not guilty.

The jury of seven women and five men is expected to begin deliberating the case Thursday after hearing a rebuttal argument from prosecutors.

In his closing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Franzblau said Weiss was trying to corrupt the political process, where laws should be fashioned with “power of the ideas instead of the size of the pocketbook.” He said any attempt to call Weiss’ payments to Arroyo and Link legitimate amounted to putting “lipstick on a pig.”

“Lobbyist, consultant, dentist, therapist, it doesn’t matter,” Franzblau said. “When you pay a public official money in exchange for an official act, it is a bribe.”

Usharovich, however, said Weiss was kept in the dark about the scheme and believed the payments were for legitimate consulting work. “If this was a bribe, it would have been done with a big bag of cash” to keep it off the books, he said.

Usharovich said every one of the current and former legislators who testified for the government, including Link, state Rep. Bob Rita, and former state Sen. Tony Munoz, admitted they had taken campaign contributions from Rick Heidner, the video gaming kingpin who is a staunch opponent of sweepstakes machines.

Another government witness who tried to get sweepstakes machines banned in Chicago, former Chicago Ald. Patrick O’Connor, testified that Heidner hired him as a $5,000-a-month consultant a month after he left office, Usharovich noted.

“The public wasn’t cheated, as they say, by Mr. Weiss and Mr. Arroyo. They public was cheated by the people who testified here,” Usharovich said. “They made you guys losers, the state of Illinois.”

But Franzblau said the government didn’t put the bribery scheme in action — Weiss and Arroyo did.

“The FBI simply walked up to a corrupt relationship that was already in place and they gave it a little nudge, and another bribery scheme came tumbling out,” he said.

Franzblau pointed to a conversation secretly recorded by Link outside a Wendy’s in Highland Park as the key moment where Arroyo laid out the true intent of the payments.

In asking Arroyo, “What’s in it for me,” Link left it open to interpretation, Franzblau said. But instead of advancing some kind of legitimate political agenda, “Arroyo switches immediately into corruption mode,” the prosecutor said.

“He thinks Link is sort of winking at him. … His response is, ‘You can get paid like I am,’ ” Franzblau said.

Franzblau also noted that Weiss had no explanation for why he told the FBI he’d spoken to a purported consultant for Link named Katherine Hunter — a woman who’d been invented by investigators as part of the sting.

When the FBI “came knocking,” Franzblau said, Weiss “told a series of outlandish lies, culminating in a detailed, fictional and absolutely impossible story that the defendant had spoken to Katherine Hunter, a person who did not exist.”

Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday morning after three full days of testimony featuring some 14 witnesses.

Weiss’ attorneys did not put on any evidence. In April they’d filed a list of 26 potential witnesses, including lobbyist Shaw Decremer, a former top aide to House Speaker Michael Madigan; ex-state Rep. Annazette Collins; Madigan-connected consultant Djavan Conway, and Jeffrey Rush, son of former U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.

After prosecutors wrapped up their evidence, U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger advised Weiss of his right to testify and asked him if he wished to take the stand in his own defense. “No, your honor,” Weiss said.

The trial centers on the largely uncharted world of sweepstakes machines, sometimes called “gray machines,” which allow customers to put in money, receive a coupon to redeem for merchandise online and then play electronic games like slot machines.

Since the machines can be played for free, they are not considered gambling devices. Critics, however, contend the unregulated devices, which operate in cities, including Chicago, that have banned video gambling, are designed to skirt the law.

The weeklong trial has been filled with political intrigue, both in the lineup of current and former elected officials who have testified as well as the backdrop of ongoing federal investigations swirling around Weiss’ associates, including the Cook County assessor’s office that Berrios once helmed.

But references to Berrios have been largely kept out of the trial. On Tuesday, the jury for the first time heard a veiled reference to the Democratic stalwart when prosecutors played a portion of a recorded interview Weiss gave to the FBI after being pulled over near his west suburban home in October 2019.

In trying to explain how he came to send a $2,500 check to Hunter, a “consultant” who was actually invented by investigators, Weiss told the agents a story about how hard it had been to gain traction with legislators in Springfield on the subject of sweepstakes machines.

Weiss said that it was so bad that even Link, who was spearheading the state’s gambling overhaul and knew his father-in-law well, told him off in vulgar terms at the Capitol.

“My father-in-law interacted with Terry Link for 30 years, and (Link) told me, ‘(Expletive) you’ to my face,” Weiss said on the recording. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Berrios, who was head of the Cook County Democratic Party and also served as Cook County assessor from 2011 to 2019, has not been accused of wrongdoing. Weiss is married to his daughter, Toni, a former state representative.

The only other time the Berrios family’s name has been mentioned came later on Tuesday, when jurors were shown a Post-it note Weiss wrote instructing that paperwork purportedly involving the consulting contract be signed and emailed to a Vanessa Berrios, Weiss’ sister-in-law, who was working as Weiss’ assistant at his valet parking company.

The testimony also focused on a parallel fight that went on at Chicago’s City Hall, where Arroyo was operating as a paid lobbyist for Weiss’ company regarding sweepstakes machine issues.

O’Connor, the longtime City Council floor leader, testified Tuesday that he proposed a ban on sweepstakes machines in 2018 after seeing them in operation at a gambling house next door to a high school.

O’Connor, who was defeated in 2019 after 36 years in City Council, said he met with Weiss one time about sweepstakes machines in the fall of 2018 at his 40th Ward office.

“He just kind of stated that he felt my position was incorrect and we just agreed that we weren’t agreeing, and that was pretty much it,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor also revealed his contract with Heidner, saying that about four months into the yearlong deal, Heidner asked him if he would cancel it.

“He made it clear that his plans had changed and he wasn’t going to need my assistance,” O’Connor testified.

The termination of the deal coincided with Heidner’s name surfacing in federal search warrants and subpoenas as part of a widening federal corruption probe involving then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval. Heidner was never accused of wrongdoing, and the U.S. attorney’s office later gave him a “non-target” letter indicating he was not a target of the investigation.

In his testimony, Link took the jury through the meetings he secretly recorded for the FBI, including one at a Wendy’s restaurant in Highland Park as well as another meeting weeks later at a Skokie pancake house, where Arroyo allegedly handed over the first $2,500 check from Weiss.

“This is, this is the jackpot,” Arroyo told Link as he handed over the check, according to the recording played for the jury Monday. Additional monthly $2,500 payments were expected to be made over the next six to 12 months, totaling $30,000, the charges alleged.

When Weiss was later questioned by agents, he lied and said Hunter was a lobbyist who lived in Winnetka and that he’d spoken to her on the phone, according to a recording of the interview also played for the jury Monday.

Testimony Tuesday began with prosecutors playing a portion of Weiss’ recorded interview with two FBI agents after they pulled him over to serve him with a warrant to seize his cellphone in October 2019. During the clip, FBI Special Agent Curtis Heide confronted Weiss about his claim that he’d talked with Hunter.

“You never had a phone conversation with Katherine Hunter. You didn’t,” Heide said on the tape.

“There was a woman who Luis (Arroyo) put me in on the phone with,” Weiss insisted. “We were … where the hell was it? We met in person. … I’m trying to give you guys the details.”

Suddenly Weiss remembered they were at Tavern on Rush. He said he and Arroyo were at the restaurant on Chicago’s Near North Side when Arroyo said, “I gotta put you on the phone with Katherine about engaging in the agreement.”

“OK, and he said Katherine?” one of the agents asked.

“I believe it was Katherine, yes,” Weiss replied.

In his closing Wednesday, Franzblau put up a slide with the words “CALL WITH A GHOST,” calling Weiss’ statements to the FBI about the fictitious Hunter “ridiculous.”

“The wheels are spinning in his head, you can almost hear them turning. … His story is impossible,” Franzblau said.

But Usharovich said investigators had no proof to show that Weiss didn’t talk to someone he thought was Hunter. He said Weiss was also under duress.

“Mr. Weiss, who isn’t the smallest fella in the world, was crammed into a car with two trained FBI agents who are throwing questions at him for an hour and a half,” Usharovich said.

Arroyo pleaded guilty to bribery but did not agree to cooperate with prosecutors. Seeger sentenced Arroyo to nearly five years in prison last year, calling him a “corruption superspreader.”

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jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

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