Conflicting portraits of Sen. Ted Stevens were painted Thursday, with government prosecutors calling the Alaska Republican a crafty politician who skirted the law and his defense characterizing him as a man of integrity.

Despite having served in the Senate for four decades, longer than any Republican in history, 12 jurors and four alternates hearing his criminal case have acknowledged knowing little about Stevens. That gives both sides a chance, in the four-week trial, to shape the jurors’ impression of the senator, who is trying to get his name cleared in time for his reelection bid in November.

Stevens has pleaded not guilty to all seven charges.

“This is a simple case about a public official who took hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free financial benefits and then took away the public’s right to know that information,” Justice Department attorney Brenda Morris told jurors in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“You do not survive politics in this town for that long without being very, very smart, very, very deliberate, very forceful and, at the same time, knowing how to fly under the radar,” Morris said.

Brendan Sullivan, Stevens’s lawyer — who represented Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal — refuted the allegations. He called the senator a “workhorse” and a man of character and honesty. He highlighted Stevens’s long career in public service, including helping Alaska win statehood in the late 1950s, as well as episodes of his personal life, such as a 1978 plane crash that killed his first wife, Ann.

The court case will largely revolve around whether Stevens knew about the extensive home renovations and willfully avoided paying his bills and decided not to report them as gifts on the public disclosure forms. On Thursday, two former Veco employees testified about helping with the home renovations, which included the addition of an entire floor on the ground level, a backup power generator, new electrical wiring, roofs, a Viking gas grill, porches and flooring.

The government alleges that Stevens also failed to report several other expensive gifts, including a $44,000 Land Rover that Allen gave Stevens in 1999 in exchange for the senator’s 1965 Mustang and $5,000 in cash. Calling it a “sweetheart deal,” Morris said the Mustang was worth less than $10,000, but Sullivan argued that Allen wanted to get the car for a girlfriend.

Any errors on the financial disclosure forms, Sullivan said, were the result of miscommunication between Stevens, his second wife, Catherine, who deals with the couple’s financial matters and took the lead in handling details of the home renovation, and a staff member who helped as a liaison, ensuring bills were settled.

And Sullivan laid much of the blame on the part of Allen for making additions — like an expensive lighting system — to the senator’s home without permission, and later concealing bills that Stevens should have paid. He said Stevens paid every bill he was given for the renovations, which amounted to $160,000.

Allen, a longtime friend of Stevens’s who has already pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state lawmakers, will soon testify against the senator and is the government’s star witness.