Before handing down a sentence that spared former Illinois Sen. Terry Link from any prison time, a federal judge tried to get to the bottom of a question that has long been left unclear: Exactly how did Link begin cooperating with the FBI?
“Did the FBI just approach Mr. Link out of the blue?” U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland asked Wednesday during Link’s long-awaited sentencing hearing for dodging $82,000 in taxes.
Specifically, the judge wanted to know if corruption is just so acceptable in Springfield that “we could just predict that somebody would just walk up” to Link “and on a dime you could say, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and we’d be off to the races with a federal case?”
“That’s despicable,” Rowland said, as Link stood before her and nodded. Then, she added, “and had you not been cooperating, you could have done that and just pocketed the money.”
But Link did cooperate with the FBI for years, allowing them to monitor his emails and listen to his phone calls. The Vernon Hills Democrat eventually wore a wire as he asked then-state Rep. Luis Arroyo “what’s in it for me” and helped the feds uncover a brazen bribery scheme.
And in the end, Rowland gave Link three years of probation on Wednesday in recognition of that cooperation.
Still, Rowland clearly struggled with the dilemma of handing a soft sentence to a public official who avoided a significant amount of taxes despite living on a taxpayer-funded salary. She even told Link that she’d “love” to hear Link’s “really thoughtful ideas” on the subject.
“How do we send the message to the next generation of elected officials that that’s not the way we do business?” Rowland said. “It’s not an acceptable way to do business.”
The judge didn’t insist that Link answer the question Wednesday. Link had spoken to the judge earlier, before learning his sentence. He described his comments as “probably one of the hardest speeches I have to make.”
He told the judge his crime was a “mistake” that was not made with the intent of “cheating the government out of anything.” Rather, he’d been trying to help a longtime friend who had fallen on hard times.
“I accept that this happened, and I have to pay the consequences for it,” Link said.
Defense attorney Catharine O’Daniel also offered the judge a long list of Link’s legislative achievements in the Illinois General Assembly. He served there between 1996 and 2020, and at one point he became a poker buddy to future President Barack Obama.
“His legacy is not this case,” O’Daniel said of her client. “This case represents a mistake.”
O’Daniel, Rowland and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine O’Neill characterized Link’s crime as not having anything to do with his public office — despite the fact that Link dodged taxes on money he took out of his campaign fund.
That general agreement will likely help Link protect his pension.
Link has explained that he was trying to help a friend whose business was going under, wife was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and son was struggling with drug addiction. So Link took money out of his campaign fund to help. The friend’s wife and son died within months of each other, and the friend died in December 2018 before he could repay the senator.
Meanwhile, Link failed to report the money taken from his campaign fund to the government as income. Link agreed when he pleaded guilty in 2020 to pay the amount he avoided in restitution.
O’Neill told Rowland on Wednesday that the FBI initially approached Link “before they had any information about the tax crime.” O’Daniel said that Link started out by providing “general background information” to the FBI so agents “better understood the mechanics” of the General Assembly.
But the more active cooperation began after the feds discovered the tax crime, O’Neill said. Link’s undercover work then led to the convictions of businessman James T. Weiss, who is now serving a 5 ½ year prison sentence for a scheme to bribe Arroyo and Link; and Arroyo, who is serving a 57-month sentence for taking Weiss’ bribes.
Cases like those are why Rowland said she struggled with the message Link’s sentence would send, though. The judge eventually acknowledged Link’s 24 years in the Legislature, and she told him, “It seems that you did some very significant and impactful legislation for people.
“And that,” she said, “is your legacy.”
