State Sen. Emil Jones III bribery trial set to begin 2 ½ years after indictment

CHICAGO – Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday morning in the federal corruption trial of state Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, who stands accused of accepting alleged bribes from a red-light camera company executive whose cooperation with the feds has also brought down several other Chicago-area politicians.

Jones, the son of former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., has remained in office since his September 2022 indictment on three counts including bribery and lying to the FBI, even winning another four-year term in an unopposed race six weeks after being charged.

Jones has remained stripped of his previous leadership and committee chair roles for the last 2 ½ years. Jones has not been in Springfield for any legislative session days since lawmakers’ early January lame duck session and subsequent inauguration events.

If convicted, Jones would be forced to give up his seat in the legislature.

The trial, which is expected to be short, will finally shed more light on a federal corruption probe that went public in the fall of 2019, just as a concurrent investigation into then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s inner circle began heating up. The trial will mark the first and likely only airing of secret recordings of Jones’ former colleague state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago, who began cooperating with the FBI after the feds raided his offices in dramatic fashion in September 2019 but died a little over a year later.

More than five years later, Madigan was convicted in a split verdict earlier this year in a case that turned out to be totally separate from Sandoval and the red-light camera industry. But Jones’ trial will be the first red-light camera-related case to go before a jury as others — including Sandoval — pleaded guilty.

‘You can raise me five grand’

Jones’ alleged criminal acts stretch back to 2019, after Jones filed legislation calling for the Illinois Department of Transportation to “conduct a study evaluating automated traffic law enforcement systems,” like red-light and speed cameras. It would have required IDOT to consult with local law enforcement and file a report on “operation, usage, permit process, and regulation” of red-light and speed camera systems already in use in Illinois, and make recommendations to further regulate the industry.

After the bill’s introduction in February 2019, it received zero hearings throughout the General Assembly’s spring legislative session.

But after lawmakers left Springfield for the summer, Jones had dinner with Omar Maani, the co-founder of Chicago-based red-light camera company SafeSpeed LLC, a top red-light camera vendor in the Chicago area. During their July 17, 2019 dinner, Maani “expressed concern about the potential impact” of Jones’ legislation, according to court documents filed by prosecutors in February.

It was then that Jones allegedly agreed to bribes in exchange for protecting SafeSpeed’s interests in Springfield. Unbeknownst to the senator, Maani was recording their dinner for the FBI.

After expressing his concerns about Jones’ bill, Maani then asked the senator about fundraising for him.

“You can raise me five grand,” Jones allegedly responded. “That’d be good.”

Later during dinner, Maani asked Jones if there was a “creative way” to make the payment in order to avoid having to report it.

But Jones was more interested in Maani finding work for a college student.

“Most importantly, I have an intern working in my office … and I’m trying to find him another job, part-time job, while he’s in school,” the senator told Maani.

Toward the end of their dinner, Jones asked what Maani wanted him to do about his red-light camera study bill. Maani told him that he’d like to see an amendment to limit the study to only Chicago, instead of the entire state.

Maani then added that he was worried that a lawmaker — whom the feds have only referred to as “State Representative A” in court documents — would “try to use the study results to cast the red-light-camera industry in a negative light,” according to the government’s February filing.

“I got you,” Jones allegedly told Maani. “And I’ll protect you from [State Representative A].”

$1,800 for no ‘real work’

The next week, Jones sent Maani his intern’s resume, saying he “had a great time at dinner” and was “looking forward to many more good times.” The same day, Jones texted the intern.

“LMAO, (Omar Maani) trying to make sure I don’t file my red light camera bill anymore,” the senator allegedly wrote. “He thinks [dinner] will do it.”

A few weeks later, Jones and Maani met up for another dinner in which they discussed the particulars of the $5,000 payment and work for the senator’s intern.

Maani reiterated that he needed to “conceal” the payment to Jones, to which the senator allegedly responded, “I feel you.” He recommended Maani sponsor an event for him, assuring Maani that the payment wouldn’t need to be recorded on campaign contribution reports filed with the state.

Jones allegedly recommended the intern be paid $15 an hour, and the two agreed that the intern would work 20 hours per week directly for Maani instead of SafeSpeed “in order to keep the relationship between defendant and (the intern) secret,” according to the government.

Four days later, Maani called Jones to tell him that he didn’t have “any real work right now” for the intern but would still pay him “obviously for you helping me out with all this stuff with the bill and [State Representative A],” according to prosecutors’ February filing.

Over the next six weeks, Maani paid the intern $1,800 even though he “did not perform any work” for either Maani or SafeSpeed, the feds allege.

The payments to the intern came to an abrupt end when Jones was interviewed by FBI agents on Sept. 24, 2019. The senator allegedly lied to the feds and claimed he had not discussed with Maani either how to conceal the $5,000 payment or how much the intern would be paid. Jones also allegedly denied having agreed to protect SafeSpeed from legislation that could negatively affect the company in exchange for Maani hiring the intern.

On that same day, FBI agents publicly raided Sandoval’s Capitol office, district office and home. The FBI also searched the offices of other local elected officials in Chicago’s southwest suburbs that same day, which led to a handful of bribery convictions related to SafeSpeed. The company changed its name to AllTech Tracking in 2023 and sued Maani for reputational harm to its business.

Red-light camera fallout

During lawmakers’ fall veto session in 2019 – as Springfield was reeling from still-unfolding federal corruption probes that not only touched Madigan and his inner circle but also nabbed two other sitting lawmakers for an unrelated episode of bribery and another senator for embezzlement – Jones’ bill finally received a hearing in the Senate.

By then, seven Republicans had signed onto the legislation as co-sponsors in a push for ethics reform in reaction to the September raids. It passed out of the Senate Transportation committee on a 16-0 vote, including Jones, though It would be another nearly three years until the senator’s alleged red-light camera bribes were revealed in his indictment.

The bill never received a vote on the full Senate floor and died without another hearing.

Sandoval, who had been recently forced out of his powerful chairmanship role on the transportation committee, would eventually plead guilty to having taken bribes from Maani dating back to 2016.

But months after Sandoval’s cooperation with the government was interrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the senator died from COVID-related complications in late 2020, and his case died with him.

Maani, whose cooperation with the government passed the seven-year mark in January, is expected to testify in Jones’ trial. He’s still operating under a deferred prosecution agreement he entered into with the government in 2020, which could see the bribery conspiracy charges against him dismissed.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Hannah Meisel

Hannah has been covering Illinois government and politics since 2014, and since then has worked for a variety of outlets from NPR affiliate stations to a startup newsletter. She’s a graduate of both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I’s Springfield campus, where she received an M.A. through the Public Affairs Reporting program and got her start reporting in the Capitol.