CHICAGO, Ill. (Capitol News Illinois) – As former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s defense lawyers began their closing arguments last week, attorney Dan Collins pointed to something the former speaker said when he took the witness stand earlier this month.
“When people ask for help, if possible, I try to help them,” Collins said, quoting his client. “That’s Mike Madigan. It’s that simple.”
Read more: Madigan attorney urges acquittal, accusing feds of ‘shoving misshapen puzzle pieces together’
Collins finished his closing arguments by accusing the FBI of exploiting that inclination by directing Chicago Ald. Danny Solis to seek Madigan’s help while secretly wearing a wire.
“Make no mistake: Danny Solis is a malignant tumor at the heart of this case,” Collins said. “Solis is an actor in a stage production.”
Collins noted that of the 23 charges Madigan faces – including alleged racketeering, bribery, extortion and wire fraud – more than two-thirds of them stem “from Danny Solis’ deception.” Four of the six counts that co-defendant and longtime Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain faces are Solis-related.
While Collins acknowledged the government is allowed to use deceptive techniques during investigations, he repeatedly poked at a prosecutor’s contention in her closing arguments last week that Solis was merely “a walking microphone” for the government.
After being caught accepting bribes and abusing his campaign funds, Solis spent 2 ½ years as an FBI mole, consenting to the government’s continued wiretap on his cell phone and agreeing to secretly videotape meetings with Madigan and former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, who was convicted on unrelated charges in 2023.
When Solis took direction from the FBI, he was no longer playing stenographer, Collins said, but was “manipulating the situation” – something he urged jurors to consider as they step into the deliberation room this week.
Read more: Madigan attorney accuses Solis of not telling feds ‘all the crimes you committed’ | ‘You won’t spend a day in jail’: Madigan attorney hammers Solis’ agreement with feds
‘Not a corrupt man’
The federal criminal probe that would eventually nab Madigan and several others in his orbit stemmed from a real estate developer’s cooperation with the FBI. That led the feds to Solis in 2014, then five years into his role as the influential chair of the Chicago City Council’s zoning board, where he’d make decisions on large-scale building projects.
That developer secretly recorded an August 2014 meeting Solis had set up with Madigan at the powerful speaker’s law firm, which specialized in property tax appeals. From there, the FBI began investigating Solis, who began cooperating with the government in June 2016. But Madigan’s out-of-the-blue call to Solis in mid-2017 captured the FBI’s attention, once more enveloping the speaker into the investigation.
In Madigan’s June 2017 call to Solis, he said he’d read about a proposed apartment complex in Chicago’s booming West Loop neighborhood, which was in Solis’ 25th Ward. When Solis asked if Madigan knew the developers, the speaker said he didn’t, “but I’d like to.”
From there, Solis got his marching orders from the FBI, Collins said. A few weeks later, the alderman told Madigan that the developer understood “how this works, you know, the quid pro quo,” meaning the company was under the impression that it would not get the zoning approvals it needed to go forward with the project unless it hired the speaker’s law firm.
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’
But it wasn’t true; Solis had already committed to the passage of the zoning changes but was waiting to act until the completion of city guidelines for development in the West Loop – something he’d also told Madigan on the initial call.
On the witness stand, Collins took the former speaker through his milquetoast “yeah, okay” reply on that call and his subsequent admonishment of Solis before walking into the meeting with the developer. Madigan claimed Solis’ comment caused him “a great deal of surprise and concern,” but he needed time to think about how to respond.
Ultimately, Madigan pulled Solis aside and told him, ‘You shouldn’t be talking like that,” going on to say that Solis was only recommending his firm because property taxes were an important part of the real estate development process.
“And here’s the thing,” Collins said Monday. “Solis got the message.”
After going over Madigan’s testimony that Solis appeared genuinely contrite when he said “sorry” after the speaker’s admonishment, Collins then read to the jury Solis’ testimony from December. It was Collins who cross-examined Solis, asking him what he understood Madigan to be telling him.
“He was telling me that it was not the reason for the meeting – to transfer a zoning change for a business into taxes,” Solis said. “It was because it would be – make the project be successful if they had a good real estate tax firm.”
Collins noted that the feds have repeatedly alleged Madigan was feeding Solis a “false story” about the meeting while tacitly agreeing to take part in the quid pro quo, but reminded the jury on Monday that the site on which the development was to be built had previously been a not-for-profit addiction treatment center, which Madigan’s firm happened to represent in the past. Because the land hadn’t been taxed in years due to its nonprofit owner, the developer would need a totally new estimate during the building process, Madigan testified.
The developer did end up hiring Madigan’s firm for such an estimate, and then a while later hired the firm for its full property tax appeal service. That ended up saving the developer around $2.5 million in taxes, Collins said.
But it wasn’t until Solis asked both Madigan and the developer in September 2017 – nearly two months after the meeting – about whether the two had begun working together, that any contract was inked. Collins on Monday said that was evidence of Solis’ manipulation in the situation, pointing out that Madigan didn’t try to slow Solis down from approving the necessary zoning changes for the development before the firm was hired. In fact, Collins said, Madigan wasn’t even sure if the firm would be hired.
“If Mike was involved in attempted extortion, he’d say, ‘Hey wait hold up, they haven’t hired us yet,’” he said.
Collins pointed to the fact that it was the defense, not the prosecution, who called the developer, Andy Cretal, to testify. During his testimony early this month, Cretal acknowledged that he was initially nervous about the meeting. But at the end of sitting through the presentation, he wanted to hire the firm.
“He gets the facts and realized, ‘I shouldn’t have been concerned. I shouldn’t have been suspicious,’” Collins said. “That’s a journey.”
He told jurors they’re on the same journey.
“You might’ve started with suspicions. But now you’ve heard the evidence. Now you’ve heard the facts. You realize the government’s suspicion doesn’t cut it.”
“So you’re gonna set aside suspicion. You’re gonna set aside cynicism,” Collins continued. “And you’re going to come to the realization that Mike Madigan is not a corrupt man.
‘The kicker is family’
In addition to the four counts involving that developer – including the alleged extortion – the feds also charged Madigan with seven counts involving his promise to help Solis get appointed to a lucrative state board position.
Solis asked for the speaker’s help in June 2018, and Madigan agreed right away, though the speaker never made the recommendation to Gov. JB Pritzker before Solis was revealed to have been an FBI cooperator.
Collins on Monday pointed to a meeting Madigan and Solis had in March 2018, when the speaker told him, “your only obligation in life is to take care of your kids. After that, everything else is a bunch of baloney.”
“So now in this stage production, Solis has learned something about Madigan,” Collins said, pointing out Solis’ family-focused preamble to his request to Madigan about helping him get appointed to a state board seat.
Solis also mentioned to Madigan that he would run for city council again in the February 2019 election, but likely not serve out the full four years – something he admitted was a lie while on the witness stand.
“So under the direction of the government, he (Solis) goes and talks to him (Madigan) about family,” Collins said of Solis. “Mike says he’ll try to help. And one of the things we know about Mike Madigan is that when somebody comes to him to ask for help, he tries to do it.”
Prosecutors allege Madigan agreed to trade the favor for Solis continuing to bring him real estate developers to pitch. But Collins pointed out that the speaker agreed to help Solis immediately after he asked, and only said things like “very good” when Solis brought up further developers to “move the conversation along” – a description Madigan used on the witness stand to explain his responses.
“This is not a scheme, this is not a bribe,” Collins said “He comes to Madigan and asks for help. And the kicker is family.”
Collins also accused Solis of manipulating not only Madigan, but also McClain in 2017 and 2018 in an effort to get state-owned land transferred to the city of Chicago, which could then sell it to a developer who wanted to build a mixed-use apartment complex in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.
The idea had actually come up in the 2014 meeting that neither Madigan nor Solis knew was being recorded by another real estate developer-turned-FBI cooperator. But nothing ever came of it, and Solis brought it to Madigan in 2017.
As the proposed development was in his ward, Solis sold it as a “legacy project” he wanted to see accomplished before he left office. Collins on Monday claimed Madigan’s help on the effort, which required legislation to get the land transferred from the Illinois Department of Transportation, was solely in service of Solis.
The feds allege Madigan was in it to get the developer’s business, but Solis didn’t tell the speaker that the developer would do so until nine months after he’d first told Madigan about the project. Defense attorneys also questioned former speaker’s office attorneys and Madigan’s former law partner, Vincent “Bud” Getzendanner about the firm’s strict conflict of interest policy, which he said would preclude them from ever taking on a client who got a property through a state land transfer.
Collins pointed to the fact that Madigan never asked for an introduction to the developers during any meetings or phone calls with Solis.
“Nowhere in these recordings did he ask for an introduction to Eddie Ni and Ray Chin,” Collins said, referring to the developers. “He didn’t want the business.”
McClain’s attorneys will begin their closing arguments on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois)
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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