CHICAGO, Ill. (Capitol News Illinois) — Federal agents asked state Sen. Emil Jones III to wear a wire against a politically connected hospital CEO and his fellow lawmakers in Springfield, the senator testified Thursday in his own defense at his federal corruption trial.
Jones, D-Chicago, said he was prepared to cooperate with the FBI in a widespread investigation into public corruption in Illinois and attended a handful of meetings with agents and prosecutors with the intent to do so before he ultimately was charged in September 2022.
But the agents, Jones said, asked him “to do things that I was not willing to do” — including wearing a wire. The senator struggled to articulate the other requests the agents made, even after U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood stepped in to restate his attorney’s question.
“Wearing a wire and — I don’t know how to describe it, judge,” Jones said.
The senator took the witness stand for a third day Thursday in his trial over alleged bribes he agreed to take from a red-light camera entrepreneur-turned-FBI witness in exchange for limiting legislation he had proposed that worried the red-light camera industry — and lying to agents about it.
Read more: Sen. Emil Jones III takes witness stand in his own defense at federal corruption trial
Not too long into questioning from his own attorney, Jones’ testimony was halted for more than an hour after he named Tim Egan, the CEO of Chicago’s Roseland Hospital in Jones’ South Side District, as someone the feds wanted him to help investigate.
“Agent (Timothy) O’Brien basically instructed me that he wanted me to wear a wire on Tim Egan and he wanted me to come up with a scenario to entrap Tim Egan,” Jones said.
Prosecutors immediately objected, which was followed by a lengthy sidebar discussion between Wood and attorneys on both sides. The arguments were intentionally masked by loud white noise in the courtroom, but Wood ultimately told jurors to disregard Jones’ answer and the senator’s lawyer, Vic Henderson, told his client to refrain from “naming names.”
Egan, who’s spent nearly a decade as a Cook County Democratic Party committeeman, has not been charged with any crimes. But Roseland Hospital has been mentioned several times throughout the trial.
Jones apparently made unsuccessful efforts to get his former intern hired there in the summer of 2019, though the senator instead connected him with Omar Maani, a co-founder of Chicago-based red-light camera company SafeSpeed. Maani, who was cooperating with the government, hired the former intern, Christopher Katz, which the feds say constituted part of a bribe.
Read more: Though wary of FBI mole’s ‘used car salesman’ vibe, Sen. Emil Jones III testifies he felt obliged to work with him | Sen. Jones sent spending money to former intern before getting him job feds say was a bribe
Roseland Hospital also threw Jones an annual campaign fundraiser, which in 2019 was scheduled for August at a White Sox game. With his FBI-provided recording devices rolling during a dinner the month before, Maani offered Jones a contribution for the event. Eventually, the senator named a number — “five grand” — which became the other purported bribe Jones allegedly agreed to.
Prosecutors say it doesn’t matter that Maani never gave Jones any money or that Jones never amended his legislation in the way Maani wanted him to, the agreement is what counts.
Read more: FBI mole told Sen. Emil Jones III to suggest ‘creative’ way to accept $5K lest it ‘look goofy’
But Jones said that while he was suspicious of Maani and his “used-car salesman” vibe, he fully believed that he and Maani never made an agreement. He said the same to FBI agents when they knocked on his door the morning of Sept. 24, 2019, who told him they were investigating his colleague, then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago, who’d connected him to Maani earlier that summer.
Five months later, however, Jones’ attorney received a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office informing him that charges were imminent. In February 2019, Jones sat down with the feds twice within the span of a week. That’s when he was asked to wear a wire on Egan after identifying different people in photos and initialing them.
They also showed Jones “snippets” of Maani’s secretly recorded videos, he said.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into Jones’s plans for cooperating with the government. On Thursday, the senator noted he wasn’t “able to go to restaurants and eat dinner with folks,” which limited opportunities for covert FBI operations.
The next time Jones met with FBI agents was in September 2021, when he and his then-lawyer were allowed to listen to all of the recordings Maani had made in addition to tape of the FBI agents’ interview with Jones on which the feds allege the senator lied.
Jones on Thursday said he left that meeting knowing “I was gonna fight these charges,” which were still a year away from being filed. The senator said that after spending eight or so hours listening to the tapes, he “felt the government was misleading me” in the February 2020 meeting when they played selected portions of the recordings.
“You hear Omar basically trying to set me up,” Jones said of Maani. “And you hear me pushing back on him, trying to change the subject, all that.”
Over the next 12 months, Jones met with the feds three more times. The senator testified that the FBI was still hoping he’d agree to wear a wire during both a February 2022 Zoom videoconference and a downtown Chicago meeting in June of that year.
Asked Thursday why he kept attending the meetings even though he’d already decided to fight the charges, Jones said he did so at the direction of his lawyer — and because he was worried the feds would charge him before the November 2022 election, though he ran unopposed.
“Did you expect to hear anything different?” his lawyer Henderson asked.
“Only thing I did hear were things that I was not willing to do,” Jones said. “Wear wires on my colleagues.”
“And why were you not willing to wear a wire?” Henderson asked.
Jones exhaled deeply before answering.
“Because — if,” he said before sighing again. “I don’t know how to answer that question.”
Feds persist in their pursuit of Jones
The senator met with the feds one final time in August 2022 in a brief meeting in which he was informed the government was moving forward with plans to charge him.
Jones was charged on three counts the following month, but in November of that year, he was reelected to a four-year term in the General Assembly.
The senator was stripped of his committee chairmanship and leadership roles in the Senate but has refused to step down in the last 2 ½ years. The last sitting lawmaker who took his federal corruption case to trial was then-state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago, in 2014. And the last state official to take the witness stand at their own trial was then-state Rep. Patricia Bailey, D-Chicago, in 2005. Both were convicted.
Deciding to testify in his own defense was a risky move, as it opened Jones up to grueling cross-examination from prosecutors. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam on Thursday attempted over and over to impeach the senator’s prior testimony, pointing out inconsistencies between the previously played secret recordings and what Jones told the jury.
Ardam questioned why Jones would portray what the government showed to him at one of the February 2020 meetings as “information shared with you” and act as if the “snippets” the agents showed were a surprise.
“The truth is you were at all of these meetings,” Ardam said.
“Yes,” Jones said.
“So you know everything that was said,” Ardam said.
“I can’t remember everything that was said,” Jones replied.
At one of those February 2020 meetings, prosecutors and one of the case agents have already told the jury that Jones acknowledged making an agreement with Maani, contrary to what he told the FBI in September 2019.
Read more: Feds set to rest case in Sen. Emil Jones III red-light camera bribery trial
The senator earlier Thursday told his own attorney a few different times that he never signed or initialed a document indicating that he was recanting his previous statements.
But Ardam waded into that territory herself.
“And you acknowledged you made a deal with Omar Maani,” she said.
“No. I. Did. Not,” Jones answered.
Ardam cast doubt on Jones’ earlier explanation on the witness stand that even though Maani made him “uncomfortable,” he still met with him because he was following a directive from Sandoval. As chair of the Senate Transportation committee, Sandoval had blocked Jones’ bill that called for a study of red-light camera systems across the state.
Jones had called Sandoval “intimidating” and “a bully” — but Ardam pointed out that in the recording of the dinner where between him, Sandoval and Maani at a suburban steakhouse in June 2025, they were cracking jokes and seemed relaxed.
“You were only intimidated by him at times?” Ardam asked.
“Yes,” Jones answered.
Later, Ardam asked whether Jones had trepidation about dealing with Sandoval in other ways.
“I never said I was scared of Senator Sandoval,” Jones said. “I said he could be a bully at times and he could be intimidating. I was never scared of him.”
Read more: At Jones trial, jury hears lawmaker bringing colleague into fold of ‘personal benefits’
Ardam also pointed out that Jones’ contention earlier in his testimony that Sandoval was arrested on Sept. 24, 2019, wasn’t true; in fact, federal agents had executed search warrants on his home and offices. He began cooperating and later pleaded guilty to bribery and tax fraud charges.
Jones held to his repeated claim, seemingly confused by her questions.
“And you know he’s no longer with us, he’s deceased,” Ardam said. “So you know that he can’t dispute anything you’re saying today?”
“Yes,” Jones replied.
But Ardam had some mixups of her own. To catch Jones in a lie over his claim Wednesday that he’d never had one of his bills die on the Senate floor, the prosecutor pointed out that in 2019, roughly 30 bills that Jones had introduced died at the end of session. As Jones attempted to tell her, that’s different than the rare and fairly embarrassing scenario in which a senator allows for a bill to be called for a vote only to see it fail to garner the minimum number of votes for passage.
Ardam also spent time suggesting that Jones benefitted from nepotism as his father, Emil Jones Jr., had been a longtime legislator and served as president of the Illinois Senate from 2003 until 2009.
“You were elected in 2008?” Ardam asked, after reminding the jury of Jones’ testimony that “ever since I was a child,” he’d wanted to be a state senator like his father.
“Yes,” Jones said.
“You didn’t tell the jury how that happened, did you?” Ardam said, before falsely asserting that Jones was appointed to his father’s seat when the elder Jones announced his retirement in August 2008.
“Well I replaced him on the ballot,” the senator explained.
“So somebody had to replace him in the Senate,” Ardam said. “Were you appointed to fill your father’s seat from August 2008 to November 2008?”
“No,” Jones said.
“You were not?” Ardam asked skeptically.
Jones and his father caught heat when the Senate president withdrew from the ballot after he’d won his 2008 primary election and later withdrew from the ballot and advocated for his son to replace him. But Jones III wasn’t sworn in to the Senate until January 2009 after his father’s term officially ended.
After acknowledging to jurors that trial has stretched longer than originally planned, Judge Wood canceled trial on Good Friday while the attorneys work through final jury instructions. Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday.
(Reporting by Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois)
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.
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