Then-Illinois state Sen. Terry Link was secretly wired for sound by the FBI in August 2019 when he met at a North Shore Wendy’s restaurant with his colleague, state Rep. Luis Arroyo, and a businessman about passing legislation benefiting so-called sweepstakes gaming machines.

After some discussion about legalizing and regulating the largely off-the-books machines, Link asked Arroyo if the two of them could speak in private.

As the two stepped outside, FBI agents were recording it on video. Cars could be heard whooshing by on Route 41. Standing face-to-face, Link assured Arroyo, “this is you and I talking now. Nobody else.” He then asked Arroyo a question that is at the center of the bribery case now on trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse:

“What’s in it for me, though?”

On the recording, which was played for a federal jury on Monday, Arroyo proceeded to tell Link that he could get paid a monthly “stipend” of $2,500 for his efforts, and that the payments could be concealed as a consulting fee.

“That would be nice,” said Link, proposing that the checks be put in another person’s name so that the money could not be traced back to him.

“My word is my bond, and my reputation — ” Arroyo said before Link cut him off.

“Just remember who passed your first bill,” Link joked on the recording.

Arroyo laughed and shot back, “You got it baby!”

That conversation was one of a number of secret recordings made by Link that were played Monday in the trial of James Weiss, a politically connected businessman accused of agreeing to pay bribes to Link and Arroyo in order to advance legislation that would help Weiss’ sweepstakes gaming business.

Listen to the audio:

Link, 76, a Vernon Hills Democrat who resigned in 2020 after being hit with federal tax charges, is the star prosecution witness in the case against Weiss, the son-in-law of former Cook County Democratic boss Joseph Berrios.

The investigation into Arroyo and Weiss was unfolding at a time when political corruption news seemed to be breaking on a daily basis.

When Link was recording Arroyo, then-Chicago Ald. Edward Burke had recently been indicted on racketeering charges, ex-Ald. Danny Solis had been outed as an FBI mole, another state senator, Thomas Cullerton, was under indictment for ghost payrolling with the Teamsters, and the Tribune had reported that the feds had raided the downstate home of one of House Speaker Michael Madigan’s closest confidants.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have previously disclosed that Link became a confidential source for the FBI in 2016, but he was terminated later that year when his tax evasion came to light.

Link testified his early cooperation was mainly answering questions about state legislative process. But the Arroyo case significantly upped the ante.

Over two days of testimony beginning last week, Link took the jury through his role spearheading the state’s massive gambling overhaul legislation in 2019, a shouting match he says he had with Arroyo about it on the Senate floor, as well as the meetings and phone calls he secretly recorded for the FBI, including at the Wendy’s 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.

At the direction of the FBI, Link had told Arroyo to have the checks made out to a purported associate named Katherine Hunter, who didn’t actually exist.

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.

Weiss’ attorneys have argued Weiss was paying Arroyo as a legitimate consultant for his business, and that trying to enlist another politician’s help is not a crime.

Near the end of his direct examination Monday, however, Link was asked by prosecutors what he believed the $2,500-a-month offering was for.

“Passing legislation for sweepstakes games,” Link said.

Asked if he believed it would have been illegal for him to take money for that, Link replied, “Absolutely.”

On cross examination, Weiss’ attorney, Ilia Usharovich, has pointed out repeatedly that it was Link who solicited the bribe from Arroyo at the behest of the FBI, and that he was cooperating in the hopes of reducing his own sentence on tax charges.

“Had anyone offered you anything of value before you asked Arroyo to step outside?” Usharovich asked at one point.

“Not at that time, no,” Link said.

Later, Link grew defensive over Usharovich’s questions about how legislation is drafted.

“First of all you don’t understand the legislative process,” Link snapped. “It can be changed 20 different times. ... Verbiage could be changed. If I let you write legislation we could change the whole world.”

Usharovich also sparred with Link over whom Arroyo was referring to when he used the term “us” on some of the recordings.

“Have you ever read the Bible?” Usharovich asked. “Do you remember the part when God says ‘Let us make man?’ But man didn’t exist yet, so the question becomes who is us? How do you know us means Jimmy?”

Link maintained that he understood Arroyo meant himself and Weiss.

Weiss, 44, who is married to former state Rep. Toni Berrios, is charged in a superseding indictment filed in October 2020 with bribery, wire fraud, mail fraud and lying to the FBI. He has pleaded not guilty.

Closing arguments in the trial could come as soon as Wednesday.

The case 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.

Prosecutors have alleged Weiss desperately wanted the state’s gambling expansion bill to include language explicitly legalizing sweepstakes machines, but it was left out of the proposal in the 2019 spring session. Weiss then agreed to pay monthly $2,500 bribes to get a deal done, first to Arroyo and later to Link, who was a chief sponsor of the gambling bill in the Senate, according to prosecutors.

“Instead of giving up, the defendant doubled down,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine O’Neill said in her opening statement Tuesday.

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

Link’s appearance in a federal courtroom took on an added spectacle since he had vehemently denied reports — including in the Tribune — that he was the cooperating state Senator A mentioned in the charges first made public in October 2019.

He’s since pleaded guilty to the tax charges and is hoping for a break on his sentence in exchange for his undercover work, he said.

In his cross-examination Monday, Usharovich tried to paint Link as a liar for denying to the media that he was the mole.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a lie,” Link testified. “I would say it’s none of your business what I’m doing with the FBI at the time. ... I’m cooperating with the FBI not the Tribune or Sun-Times anybody else.”

Also testifying Monday afternoon was FBI Special Agent Curtis Heide, who was one of Link’s handlers who conducted surveillance of the senator’s meetings with Arroyo and later interviewed Weiss in the car.

Heide testified they had search warrants for Weiss’ phone and were sitting outside his house on the morning of Oct. 25, 2019, when Weiss exited and drove away. They pulled him over near a soccer field in Maywood and asked him to get in the car, Heide said.

Weiss was told he was not under arrest, and was not handcuffed, Heide said. He wound up answering questions in a recorded interview for almost an hour and a half.

Near the end of the interview, Weiss is asked about Katherine Hunter — the woman that the FBI had invented — and whether she works for Arroyo.

“She’s a, uh, consultant that I had hired. ... To help with us you know the relationship with, uh, Senator Link,” Weiss responded. When one of the agents asked if Hunter was from Chicago, Weiss said, “From uh, Winnetka,” according to the recording played in court.

“I talked to Katherine over the phone about engaging in the relationship and helping me, that’s all,” Weiss said on the tape. “Luis told me this is who I needed to hire and I hired her.”

Weiss said he’d only talked to Hunter once. “It was brief. It was a two-minute phone conversation,” he said on the recording.

At one point, Weiss said he could look through his phone to find out when he talked to her, but then said he didn’t have her number stored.

Later, Heide confronted Weiss about the payments. “To me this looks like a bribe,” Heide said in the interview.

“That wasn’t my intention,” Weiss replied. “I hired a consultant, I hired a lobbyist to carry out to the legislative action on behalf of my company.”

The next day, the agents searched the P.O. Box in Lincolnshire where Link had directed Weiss to send the checks and paperwork. Inside was an envelope with a second check for $2,500 made out to Hunter, as well as a contract agreeing to pay Hunter a total of $30,000 over the next year.

The note instructed the fictitious Hunter to “please sign and email” the contract back to an address used by Weiss for his valet parking companies.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com