Jones testifies that FBI asked him to wear a wire on hospital CEO, other lawmakers

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.

The Chicago Democrat 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 asked him that he was not willing to do — including wearing a wire, he said. The senator struggled to name 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.

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.

Prosecutors immediately objected, which was followed by a lengthy sidebar discussion between Wood and attorneys on both sides. Wood 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.

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.

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 on Sept. 24, 2019, when they told him they were investigating his colleague, then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval, a Chicago Democrat, who connected him to Maani earlier that summer.

Five months later, Jones’ attorney received a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s office informing him that charges were imminent. In February 2020, 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 said 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 said the senator lied.

Jones on Thursday said he left that meeting knowing he was going to fight the 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 misled him 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 video conference and a downtown Chicago meeting in June of that year.

Asked Thursday why he kept attending the meetings even though he was planning 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.

Feds persist in their pursuit of Jones

Jones met with the feds one final time in August 2022 where 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 4-year term.

The senator was stripped of his committee chairmanship and leadership roles, but refused to step down.

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.

At one of those February 2020 meetings, prosecutors and one of the case agents told the jury that Jones acknowledged making an agreement with Maani, contrary to what he told the FBI in September 2019.

Ardam questioned 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.”

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.

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