Businessman James T. Weiss, a son-in-law of former Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios, has been found guilty of a scheme to bribe two members of the Illinois General Assembly.

Weiss was found guilty on all counts, including honest services wire and mail fraud, and lying to the FBI.

Weiss took a few slow sips from a red cup as U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger read the jury’s verdict.

Sentencing was set for Oct. 11. The most serious counts carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Weiss’ trial stretched over seven days and featured 15 witnesses, including four who have held elected office. One of them, former state Sen. Terry Link, finally had to admit that he’d secretly cooperated with the FBI and then lied to the public about it when exposed in media reports.

It’s the second gulity verdict in less than two months at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse to address separate bribery schemes at the Illinois Capitol. Both revolved around the world of lobbying and were exposed by secret FBI recordings.

Weiss’ trial also centered on unregulated gambling devices known as sweepstakes machines, which can look like normal video slot machines but also offer “free play” options and coupons to users.

The trial is among several set to play out through the spring of 2024. Weiss is a son-in-law of former Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios.

An October 2020 indictment against former state Rep. Luis Arroyo and Weiss alleged that Arroyo, a Democrat, effectively served as Weiss’ bought-and-paid for member of the Illinois House of Representatives. In exchange for $32,500 in bribes, Arroyo agreed to vote for and promote sweepstakes legislation in Springfield. 

Arroyo has admitted taking those bribes and is now serving a nearly five-year prison sentence.

Weiss’ defense attorneys insisted during the trial that Weiss’ payments to Arroyo actually amounted to legitimate consulting fees paid for Arroyo’s help blocking a proposed ordinance at Chicago City Hall. It would have banned sweepstakes machines.

Meanwhile, after a landmark gambling package passed the Illinois General Assembly in 2019 without sweepstakes language, Arroyo and Weiss turned to Link, another Democrat, for help. But Link turned out to be secretly cooperating with the FBI. 

Link has since pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns, and he worked with the feds in hope of a sentencing break.

Link’s two days on the witness stand during Weiss’ trial did little to clear up the timeline of his cooperation. The feds have previously said he became a source in 2016 and was terminated in November 2016 after the FBI learned about his false tax returns. It’s not clear when his cooperation resumed.

Link testified that his cooperation began simply — he passed along information “that was basically public information … more or less procedural information on how … the Senate works.” 

But he confirmed for a prosecutor that he began regularly making recordings for the FBI in 2018 and 2019. The only recordings by Link that have been made publicly known were of Arroyo and Weiss in 2019.

Prosecutors aired those recordings for the first time during Weiss’ trial. One captured an Aug. 2, 2019 meeting between Weiss, Arroyo and Link at a Highland Park Wendy’s. At one point, Link asked Arroyo, “Can I talk to you alone one second?”

Outside the Wendy’s — and away from Weiss — Link asked Arroyo, “What’s in it for me?” Arroyo explained that he was a “paid consultant for him” making $2,500 a month, that the same could be arranged for Link, and that payments could be made to a third party.

Link testified that he understood Arroyo’s reference to “him” to mean Weiss.

Arroyo and Link met a second time at Sander’s restaurant in Skokie on Aug. 22, 2019. Shortly before they did, FBI agents gave Link the name of a fictional third party to be paid — “Katherine Hunter.” Jurors heard a recording of the meeting that then followed, in which Arroyo gave Link a $2,500 check from Weiss’ business and said “this is the jackpot.”

Link told Arroyo to make that check out to Hunter. And two months later, the FBI found a second $2,500 check from Weiss’ business, Collage LLC, made out to Hunter in Link’s post-office box in Lincolnshire.

Still, Weiss’ attorneys argued that Arroyo never looped Weiss in on his illegal bribery deal with Link. And when FBI agents confronted Weiss in October 2019, he actually told them Arroyo had once put him on the phone with Hunter. 

“I talked to Katherine over the phone about engaging in the relationship and helping me,” Weiss told the FBI about the fictional consultant. “That’s all.”

One of those FBI agents, Curtis Heide, acknowledged to Weiss defense attorney Ilia Usharovich that he couldn’t disprove Weiss’ claim that Arroyo told him Hunter was on the other end of a phone call. But Weiss went further in his interview with the agents, telling them she actually lived in Winnetka.

Former Chicago Ald. Patrick O’Connor (40th), who proposed the ordinance that Weiss wanted to block at City Hall, testified that he was unaware of lobbying there on the issue after late 2018. Meanwhile, Weiss’ payments to Arroyo were made between Nov. 1, 2018, and Oct. 1, 2019.

That’s the time period in which state Rep. Robert “Bob” Rita told jurors he noticed a significant change in Arroyo’s behavior in Springfield. Rita said Arroyo went from never mentioning sweepstakes machines to pestering him about them constantly amid negotiations on the gambling bill.

“He continually pressed the issue to the point where I didn’t even want to talk to him anymore,” Rita testified.

Weiss’ trial began June 5 despite a last-minute appeal by Weiss’ defense team on an argument that was quickly labeled “frivolous” by Seeger and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

It centered around the U.S. Constitution’s “Speech or Debate Clause,” which protects members of Congress from interference by other branches of the federal government. The courts noted the clause applies not to the Illinois General Assembly but to Congress — and Weiss was not a member of either body.

The courts ruled against the appeal at the same time as a rocky pretrial hearing in which Usharovich was silenced by the judge. Usharovich eventually claimed he’d been unlawfully restrained and had thrown up in a cup in the courtroom.

The 7th Circuit has given Usharovich until Tuesday to explain why his “frivolous” appeal should not lead to disciplinary action, “including suspension, disbarment, or a fine.”