CHICAGO — Nearly eight and a half years after being confronted by federal authorities about his own wrongdoing, former Chicago Ald. Daniel Solis took the witness stand Thursday in the corruption trial of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan to testify about his unprecedented turn as an FBI mole.

Solis is the 34th prosecution witness — and arguably the most important — to be called in Madigan’s trial, and his long-awaited testimony is expected to last well into December.

Solis, 75, worked undercover for more than two years, making a series of video and audio recordings that prosecutors allege captured Madigan, his powerful Democratic counterpart, scheming to use his official duties to squeeze developers for tax appeal business for his private law firm.

Dressed in a dark gray suit and blue-gray tie and looking thinner than he had in his last court appearance a year ago, Solis entered U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey’s 12th Floor courtroom shortly past 4 p.m., taking the longer path to the witness stand closest to the jury box, away from Madigan’s seat at the defense table.

While Madigan appeared to watch Solis intently, the former alderman did not look in his direction as he took his seat and adjusted the microphone.

Solis began his testimony in a slightly hoarse, subdued voice, describing the bribery charge he’s facing, his decision to cooperate, and his deal with prosecutors that will see the case against him dropped as long as he testifies truthfully.

Asked what he was accused of, Solis said in a rehearsed tone: “Trying to solicit campaign contributions from a developer that had a pending application in my Zoning Committee.”

Solis, who represented the city’s 25th Ward and was the head of the City Council’s influential Zoning Committee, also testified last year in the corruption trial of former Ald. Edward Burke.

But in that case, Solis was called by Burke’s lawyers in a Hail Mary attempt to win acquittal. This time, Solis is being called as a foundation of the prosecution’s case, adding import to how he comes across to the jury and also exposing him to a much more wide-ranging cross-examination over his own alleged misdeeds.

In his opening statement to the jury last month, Madigan attorney Tom Breen made clear there will be no kid-glove treatment of Solis, sarcastically calling him an “absolute beaut” and a morally bankrupt liar with a “decrepit personal and professional life.”

Breen also called Solis a “braggart and a BS-er.” He told the jury Solis was given a script by the FBI and anything he said should be treated with suspicion.

On Thursday, the jury heard that Solis only agreed to cooperate after being confronted by the FBI with wiretaps and other evidence, including surveillance photos of him and an associate going into a massage parlor.

Because he was called so late in the day Thursday, Solis was still testifying about his background and time at City Hall when the trial recessed for the week.

He’ll be back on the stand on Monday morning, and will likely still be on direct examination when the trial recesses Wednesday for a long Thanksgiving weekend.

Meanwhile, the real fireworks of the day came right before Solis took the stand, when FBI Special Agent Ryan McDonald testified about the origins of the Solis investigation and how it ultimately led to the state’s most powerful politician in Madigan.

Most of those details are well-known by now, but in cross-examining McDonald, Madigan attorney Dan Collins took the opportunity to frame Solis as grimy and unreliable even before the former alderman took the stand.

Collins also brought out for the first time publicly that the FBI had been investigating Solis’ sister, longtime Democratic political strategist Patti Solis Doyle, around the same time the alderman came under scrutiny.

Among the things agents were looking at, McDonald said, was a $100,000 offer from a hotel developer that Doyle, a former campaign director for Hillary Clinton, discussed with her brother.

In fact, McDonald verified that agents had twice sought and won permission to wiretap Doyle’s phone in 2014.

“That was a significant decision by the FBI, right?” Collins asked. “You were intercepting the relative of a public official? She was working closely with a Democratic candidate for president?”

McDonald agreed it was significant. But on redirect by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, McDonald confirmed the wiretap on Doyle’s phone was not “fruitful” and was discontinued after several months. He also said they never told Daniel Solis about it.

Patti Solis Doyle has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Collins also used much of his cross-examination to call into question Solis’ close relationship with attorney Brian Hynes, who was the first person Solis contacted after the FBI confronted him at his home.

Hynes, who grew up down the block from Madigan and served the speaker in various roles, went into business with Doyle in 2010 through a venture called Vendor Assistance Program, which made millions by buying up unpaid bills from the state, then collecting the late fees.

An FBI search warrant affidavit painted Hynes as intricately involved in Solis’ business and personal affairs, arranging a loan from a mutual friend when Solis was hard up for cash, offering early advice on a development before the alderman met with the city’s planning commissioner and providing counsel when Solis’ daughter was entangled in a legal dispute.

The jury, however, did not hear those details. Instead, McDonald confirmed under questioning by Collins that two days after Solis was confronted by the FBI, he had a two-hour-long meeting with Hynes that he did not record.

Collins also pointed out Hynes was an associate of convicted ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and that Madigan and Hynes had a falling-out in the ’90s, implying that Hynes had motivation to urge Solis to cooperate against the speaker and the investigation could have been tainted from the start.

Hynes also has not been charged with wrongdoing.

McDonald testified that Solis first got on agents’ radar in 2014 after See Wong, a real estate developer who was cooperating in an attempt to get leniency in a fraud case, secretly recorded a meeting between Solis and Madigan. After that, the government got permission to wiretap Solis’ phone, McDonald said.

By June 2016, they had gathered enough potentially incriminating material — wiretapped calls, photos of Solis outside a massage parlor — to confront him at his home, McDonald told the jury. After consulting with an attorney, Solis agreed to cooperate and have his cellphone conversations recorded.

The focus of the investigation shifted in June 2017 when Madigan called Solis asking for an introduction to a developer in Solis’ ward, McDonald said.

Agents started instructing Solis to tempt Madigan with fake stories about developers agreeing to give Madigan’s private tax company their business if Madigan and Solis would help them out legislatively, McDonald said. Solis also falsely told Madigan he would bring tax work to Madigan’s firm if Madigan would help get him appointed to a board seat.

In his preliminary testimony late Thursday, Solis took jurors through an abbreviated journey of his life story, from his immigration to the U.S. when he was a child to his time in the Marine Corps Reserve and his work with at-risk Latino youth.

He met Madigan while lobbying for a school reform bill in Springfield in the late ’80s, he testified, but was much closer to former Mayor Richard M. Daley, who in 1996 appointed him to fill a vacant City Council seat.

From 2009 to 2019, Solis chaired the powerful Zoning Committee, which could approve or kill development projects all over the city, he said. And no ward was hotter for real estate developers at that time than the 25th, which included the South Loop, West Loop and Chinatown.

“They were attracting a lot of people,” Solis said. “I guess you could say a lot of it was gentrifying … they were increasing in size.”

As part of his deal with the U.S. attorney’s office, Solis admitted to taking campaign cash from a real estate developer in exchange for official action as Zoning Committee chair. But instead of facing jail time, Solis will see all charges against him dropped next year, leaving him with a clean criminal record.

What’s more, the deal could allow Solis to keep collecting his nearly $100,000 annual city pension, which could easily bring in a sizable sum from the taxpayer-funded system over the remainder of his lifetime.

When the extraordinary leniency was made official in 2022, some in City Hall, including then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, complained it was a travesty of justice. But Bhachu, the lead prosecutor in the investigation, told the judge overseeing Solis’ case that his cooperation was perhaps “singular” even in the city’s long history of political corruption.

“Some may view (Solis’ deal) as being with little precedent, but what Mr. Solis did also was with little precedent,” Bhachu said then. “He didn’t just talk. He took action. He worked with the federal government for six years to expose corruption.”

Solis’ work as an FBI mole began in mid-2016, when he was confronted by investigators who had secretly listened in on hundreds of his phone calls over the course of nearly a year, including conversations where the alderman solicited everything from campaign donations to Viagra pills and sexual services at a massage parlor, court records show.

He had already agreed to go undercover for investigators when he traveled to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later that summer with the hopes of getting Madigan on tape, The Chicago Tribune has previously reported.

Instead, Burke walked into the picture and the investigation took an abrupt turn. In testimony in Madigan’s trial last month, in fact, McDonald told the jury that Madigan didn’t resume as a focus until more than a year later.

Burke was convicted of an array of corruption schemes last year in large part because of Solis’ cooperation and is now serving two years in prison.

In her opening statement to the jury in Madigan’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker outlined a series of schemes involving Solis, including one where Madigan allegedly pushed the governor’s office to place Solis on a six-figure state board position in exchange for the alderman’s help in landing legal business.

She showed jurors a copy of a note on Madigan’s law firm stationery that signaled Solis would be interested in sitting on a state labor relations board or on the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Madigan’s moves demonstrated how he operated in a “transactional” way, Streicker said. “When Madigan saw an opportunity to enrich himself, he took it,” she said.

In another episode, Streicker said, Madigan specifically requested Solis to help connect the longtime speaker with Harry Skydell, the New York-based developer of the sprawling Old Post Office.

In 2017, Madigan prepared to “exploit Solis’ power” over a proposed project called Union West in the West Loop, Streicker said. With the project being considered in the City Council where Solis oversaw zoning matters, Solis let Madigan know that the developer understood there was a “quid pro quo” that Madigan’s law firm should get the property tax business, Streicker said.

Later, Madigan was recorded using “whisper tones” to give a “false explanation” to Solis and told him to steer clear of using the phrase “quid pro quo,” Streicker said.

Breen, meanwhile, countered by playing the exchange that was captured on a shaky video recording Solis made of Madigan explaining that Solis should not use the term “quid pro quo” because what Madigan’s property tax appeals firm was offering was high-quality work.

Madigan, 82, of Chicago, who served for decades as speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the state Democratic Party, faces racketeering charges alleging he ran his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise.

He is charged alongside Michael McClain, 77, a former ComEd contract lobbyist from downstate Quincy. Both men have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

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