Sen. Stevens and his wife may take the stand on Wednesday

Sen. Ted Stevens’s criminal trial is expected to heat up with the senator, his wife and a friend who oversaw the remodeling of the couple’s home taking the witness stand as early as Wednesday.

The pivotal testimony comes as the defense plans to rest its case as soon as Thursday. The prosecution will then call three more witnesses to rebut the defense’s case before closing arguments are made, most likely on Monday.

{mosads}If the timeframe holds, the jury will have a full two weeks to reach a verdict before Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and a political icon in Alaska, stands for reelection on Nov. 4.

Stevens, 84, has pleaded not guilty to seven felony charges of lying under oath by failing to publicly disclose more than $250,000 in gifts, mainly from his former friend Bill Allen of the now-defunct Veco oil company.

That amount allegedly includes an unpaid tab of $188,000 for renovations at the couple’s Girdwood, Alaska, home, including the addition of a ground floor, new appliances, a Jacuzzi, two decks and a steel staircase.

The senator’s defense team has been trying to establish a theory that Allen was an overzealous and reckless contractor who concealed bills and added expensive renovations without consulting the senator or his wife.

The Stevenses say the $160,000 they paid for the renovations was a fair price.

Also, the defense contends that the senator was not in the loop while his wife took the lead role in the remodeling project.

Catherine Stevens, a registered Washington lobbyist, could provide a first-hand account of the couple’s role in the remodeling project. The government, though, may have a chance to undercut that defense after the judge ordered her law firm, Mayer Brown LLP, to turn over e-mails she sent to the senator and 37 other people around the time that the renovations took place.

The senator, who described himself as “a mean, miserable SOB,” could be combative under an intense cross-examination. If he seems evasive or dishonest, it could undermine testimony from high-profile politicians who vouched for the senator’s integrity.

The defense on Wednesday also plans to call Bob Persons, a friend who oversaw the renovations while the Stevenses were in Washington. He could take the blame for the senator not seeing all the bills.

Persons also could rebut statements he made in phone calls, secretly recorded by the FBI, which were played for the jury and show he and Allen discussing a scheme to ensure Stevens got some renovations for free. Allen, the government’s star witness, testified this month that Persons told him Stevens was “just covering his ass” when he asked for bills, in a deliberate attempt to cover his tracks.

Before that testimony, the jurors will finish hearing from Augie Paone, a subcontractor who performed renovations at Stevens’s home and was paid $131,000 for his work. His testimony was cut short Tuesday to sort out a legal dispute over whether to allow Paone to say that Allen told him to “eat” a nearly $20,000 bill, even though that conflicts with Paone’s secret grand jury testimony.

Allen testified that he never told Paone to eat the bill.

“Our point is that Mr. Allen lied in this court,” said Rob Cary, a Stevens defense attorney, with the jury not present.

In Paone’s testimony, defense lawyers tried to paint the portrait that Allen, not the senator, was his main point of contact.

Allen testified last week that he informed the senator of many of the renovations.

Stevens’s daughter, Susan Covich, testified Tuesday that she was unsettled by Allen making regular visits to the house in 2002 and 2003. Some situations were “too creepy” that she often stayed in a hotel even though she was studying at a local university. The testimony was meant to show that Allen took renovations up on his own with the senator and his wife away.

Tuesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a 32-year Senate veteran, became the fourth witness in the criminal trial to tout Stevens’s honesty, calling the Republican one of the “legends in the Senate.”