CHICAGO (Capitol News Illinois) – It was a well-known aphorism during former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s record 36 years in power that while others in the state’s political realm were merely playing checkers, the longtime Democratic powerbroker was playing chess.
And on Wednesday, after three months of listening to testimony followed by a marathon week of closing arguments, the lead prosecutor in Madigan’s corruption trial presented that idiom to jurors before they were finally released to deliberate.
In a final attempt to weaken defense attorneys’ arguments over the racketeering, bribery and other corruption allegations against Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu told jurors that Madigan and McClain were neither “stupid” nor “beginners.”
“Mr. Madigan and McClain are adept at making sure Mr. Madigan’s fingerprints are not left at the scene,” Bhachu said of an episode involving a proposed land deal that forms the basis of five charges against the defendants. “They’re not playing checkers. They’re playing chess. And the two of them are grand masters of corruption.”
It was a line Bhachu used nearly two years ago in closing arguments in a related trial in which McClain and three other former executives and lobbyists for electric utility Commonwealth Edison were charged with bribing Madigan.
Read more: Government paints ex-ComEd officials as ‘grand masters of corruption’ before jury deliberations | ‘ComEd Four’ found guilty on all counts in bribery trial tied to ex-Speaker Madigan
The jury in the current trial has not been told that McClain and his ex-colleagues were convicted in 2023’s “ComEd Four” trial for giving jobs and contracts for the speaker’s allies in order to grease the wheels for legislation the utility wanted to see passed in Springfield. But since October, jurors have learned the ins and outs of ComEd’s last few decades in business and the major legislative wins it scored that turned the tide for the once-struggling utility.
They’ve also heard about a similar albeit smaller alleged scheme involving telecom giant AT&T Illinois. And they’ve heard the several secretly recorded calls and meetings concerning Madigan’s law firm recited or picked apart at least a dozen times.
Those wiretapped calls and videotaped meetings were combined with hundreds of documents like emails, letters, reports and internal records from dozens of people involved in the alleged episodes that make up the charges.
The jury heard from 64 witnesses, including star government witnesses with plea deals and Madigan himself, who took the stand in his own defense earlier this month in a surprising turn of events.
Attorneys on both sides spent the last week of closing arguments trying to spin key pieces of evidence in their favor, culminating in prosecutors’ rebuttal arguments Wednesday.
Read more: McClain lawyer calls star witnesses liars as trial nears conclusion | ‘Suspicion doesn’t cut it’: Madigan attorney urges jury to ‘see the man, not the myth’
While Bhachu spent time trying to rehabilitate the trustworthiness of key FBI cooperating witnesses after defense attorneys ripped them to shreds this week, he also devoted significant time to Madigan’s own testimony. In a handful of side-by-side comparisons with moments from secret recordings and testimony from others called during trial, Bhachu told jurors the only explanation for the discrepancies was that that Madigan had lied.
“To believe Mike Madigan’s testimony, you’d have to believe all these folks were lying either in testimony or on tapes,” Bhachu said, naming nine people either called as witnesses or heard in the recordings.
‘Usual course of business’
Jurors spent the entire trial with only a notebook to jot down thoughts on exhibits or witnesses – and repeated warnings not to research the case or even discuss it among themselves. Now, they will finally be able to review evidence for as long as they want. They can also debate the nuances of certain episodes and the judge’s lengthy instructions on the law, which both prosecutors and defense attorneys cited frequently during closing arguments.
For example, lawyers for both Madigan and McClain homed in on a jury instruction that says “bona fide salary, wages, fees or compensation paid in the usual course of business” do not qualify as a “thing of value” in a bribery exchange.
While attorneys for both men acknowledged – to different degrees – that a handful of Madigan allies did not work for a combined $1.3 million in monthly checks they indirectly received from ComEd going back to 2011, they instead focused the jury on the fact that the majority of those who’d been hired or contracted by ComEd after a Madigan recommendation did, in fact, work for their pay.
Read more: Jury sees relentless ComEd job placement requests from Madigan co-defendant | ComEd lobbyist warned FBI mole to ‘keep Madigan happy’ and not mess with no-work contracts
As ComEd’s lead external lobbyist for years, McClain took Madigan’s job recommendations and referred them to leaders at the utility for consideration. McClain’s attorney Pat Cotter characterized the efforts as merely “favors” in closing arguments this week, which are allowed in the practice of lobbying.
But Bhachu on Wednesday urged the jury to focus on the second half of the instruction: “paid in the usual course of business.”
The prosecutor pointed to early trial testimony from current and former ComEd executives who acknowledged feeling pressured to hire recommendations that came through McClain, as they understood them to be directed by powerful House speaker Madigan.
ComEd’s former top attorney testified that the utility originally contracted with a law firm owned by Madigan fundraiser Victor Reyes in 2011 on the recommendation of ComEd’s former CEO. But Bhachu pointed to McClain’s involvement in subsequent contract renewal negotiations as evidence of pressure from Madigan.
In an email to then-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore in 2016, McClain claimed it would upset Madigan if Reyes’ firm was no longer guaranteed 850 annual hours of contract work from ComEd, despite the fact that the firm had only hit that figure once.
“Is it the ordinary course of business when you don’t have work for somebody (that) we’re basically gonna force you to give them work, that we’re not gonna take no for an answer?” Bhachu asked the jury.
The prosecutor also pointed to a 2017 episode in which former Democratic state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, newly retired after two decades in the General Assembly, asked for Madigan’s assistance to get lobbying clients. After Madigan referred Acevedo to McClain, the lobbyist reached out to AT&T Illinois asking if there was money in the company’s budget for “even a small contract” for Acevedo.
Read more: Former Madigan ally contradicts past statements after being ordered to testify | In bribery trial, AT&T lobbyists detail contentious meeting with Madigan ally
The feds contend the nine-month contract, under which Acevedo was indirectly paid $22,500 despite doing no work for the company, was meant as a bribe to help secure passage of an AT&T-backed law that freed it from expensive 1930s-era regulations that forced continued maintenance of aging copper landlines.
But Acevedo took offense to what he considered too low an offer. One longtime Madigan staffer-turned AT&T lobbyist testified that he received a call from Acevedo after the offer meeting and hold him, “F— AT&T. They can kiss my ass,” But Acevedo ended up accepting the offer, which prosecutors say was only after McClain’s intervention.
“Is that ordinary course of business?” Bhachu asked jurors, asking them to draw on their “everyday experience” when thinking about Acevedo’s contract. “Why would someone think they’re entitled to say ‘F— you’ to an employer and then still get hired and get paid $22,500 for doing not a damn thing?”
For ‘friendship’ or ‘profit’?
Bhachu on Wednesday also picked up a thread from closing arguments presented by Cotter the previous day, who told the jury that McClain had been motivated to help Madigan not by profit, but friendship.
The prosecutor contradicted that claim, emphasizing that McClain also benefitted financially from the alleged enterprise he ran with Madigan. But he did fortify Cotter’s point that – despite Madigan’s testimony downplaying his close friendship with McClain during his testimony – the two were undeniably close.
McCLAIN HATS OFF photo
“If you just listened to direct testimony (from Madigan), you’d have thought he (McClain) was just the postman or akin to the Uber Eats driver,” Bhachu said.
In addition to being charged with facilitating the alleged bribe in the form of Acevedo’s AT&T contract, McClain is also charged with helping in an effort to transfer state-owned land in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood to the city so it could be sold to a real estate developer who wanted to build a mixed-use apartment complex.
McClain was recruited to the effort after Chicago Ald. Danny Solis asked Madigan for his help in mid-2017, about a year into his cooperation with the FBI. While the former speaker’s attorney Dan Collins repeatedly railed against Solis as untrustworthy and taking directions from the government like “an actor in a stage production,” Bhachu on Wednesday said Madigan was free to react however he wanted – and chose to be driven by profit.
Read more: Prosecutor says Madigan should’ve heeded ‘wrong way’ signs but instead pursued profit | In closing arguments, prosecutor alleges Madigan was driven by ‘power and profit’
The feds allege the former speaker agreed to help Solis on the Chinatown effort and in getting appointed to a lucrative state board seat in exchange for the powerful alderman – who for years chaired city council’s influential zoning board – bringing Madigan potential clients for his property tax appeals-focused law firm.
Bhachu mocked Madigan’s explanation for the way he reacted to Solis’ explicit mention of a “quid pro quo” and other red flags with responses like “yeah, okay” and “okay, good,” which the former speaker said were a product of his upbringing and a desire to be nonconfrontational.
Madigan did tell Solis a few weeks after the “quid pro quo” comment that he “shouldn’t be talking like that,” which the former speaker said he felt settled the matter based on Solis’ apology and “the expression on his face.”
But Bhachu contrasted Madigan’s claim of wanting to avoid confrontation with former staffers’ testimony that Madigan was not afraid to speak his mind, despite his publicly taciturn image.
“This idea that he was Mike ‘milquetoast’ Madigan — ‘yeah, okay,’” Bhachu told the jury, affecting a dopey voice and waving his arms in reciting Madigan’s responses to Solis. “He was the most powerful politician in Illinois.”
Read more: Madigan takes witness stand, denying he traded ‘public office’ for ‘private gain’ | In contentious cross-examination, prosecutor accuses Madigan of not telling ‘the whole truth’ | Madigan leaves witness stand expressing regret for ‘any time spent with Danny Solis’
Bhachu ended by showing the jury a letter McClain wrote to Madigan on the eve of his official retirement from lobbying in late 2016. The letter, which also came up during closing arguments from Madigan and McClain’s teams, told Madigan and his wife that he’d “never leave your side,” and that “At the end of the day I am at the bridge with my musket standing with and for the Madigan family.”
But Bhachu focused on a handwritten note at the bottom of the typed letter in which McClain compared Madigan to former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, saying the speaker had his “hand on the rudder,” steering the ship that was Illinois. The prosecutor said it was true: Madigan did have his hand on the rudder – along with “the trust that was placed in him by each and every member of the public.”
“But in guiding that ship, if you will, Mr. Madigan abused that trust,” Bhachu said. “He lost his way. He was blinded by profit, by power, by his desire to stay in power. And with the assistance of Mr. McClain, he betrayed that trust. He threw it overboard. Abandoned it.”
By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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