CHICAGO – As prosecutors began their closing arguments Wednesday in the trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, they accused the longtime Democratic powerbroker of lying to the jury when he testified in his own defense earlier this month.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what you heard on the witness stand was a facade,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz said, contrasting the ex-speaker’s surprise testimony with evidence jurors haven’t seen since the trial’s early weeks in October and November.
Read more: Madigan takes witness stand, denying he traded ‘public office’ for ‘private gain’
Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain, are accused of running a “criminal enterprise,” which Schwartz told the jury was meant to “enhance and preserve Madigan’s power and line Madigan’s pockets.”
“Power and profit: that’s what drove Madigan, with the help of McClain, to break the law time and again,” she said.
Along with the overarching racketeering conspiracy charge, Madigan faces 22 other counts of bribery, extortion and other corruption charges. McClain is also charged in several of those counts, though he has already been convicted for his role in bribing Madigan along with three other former lobbyists and executives from electric utility Commonwealth Edison.
Prosecutors allege Madigan solicited bribes in the form of jobs and contracts for his political allies – a handful of whom ended up raking in $1.3 million over a period of years for doing little to no work for ComEd – in exchange for an easier time pushing its preferred legislation through the General Assembly.
Read more: ‘They were being paid as a favor to Mike Madigan’: Feds’ star witness takes stand | ComEd lobbyist warned FBI mole to ‘keep Madigan happy’ and not mess with no-work contracts
Madigan and McClain are also accused of running a similar, albeit smaller, bribery scheme with telecom giant AT&T Illinois and using the former speaker’s position of power to steer business toward Madigan’s property tax appeals law firm. But Schwartz’s presentation Wednesday afternoon only got as far as the ComEd-related charges.
Under questioning from his own attorney earlier this month, Madigan claimed ignorance of his political allies’ no-work contracts with ComEd and said he didn’t learn that the men had merely been collecting paycheck until the feds’ investigation became public.
His reaction then: “Very angry,” Madigan told the jury, explaining that he’d known former Chicago Ald. Frank Olivo – a longtime neighbor in his 13th Ward power base on the city’s Southwest Side – “for years.”
“Frank knew that I worked all the time and that I expected people associated with me to work all the time,” Madigan said. “He knew that and given that knowledge, he should’ve been working. He should’ve done his job.”
But in closing arguments Wednesday, Schwartz used Madigan’s yearslong relationship with Olivo against him, reminding jurors that the two men were so close, one of Olivo’s sons called the former speaker “uncle.”
“Madigan knew what Olivo was and wasn’t doing,” Schwartz said.
After Olivo retired from the Chicago City Council in spring 2011, he became a consultant under external ComEd lobbyist Jay Doherty’s long-running contract. Prosecutors allege the August 2011 contract start date – in addition to an October 2011 contract for a law firm owned by Madigan fundraiser Victor Reyes – was no coincidence for the fate of major legislation ComEd ultimately saw become law later that year.
Read more: ComEd exec testifies utility prepared for bankruptcy before 2011 law threw it a lifeline
The so-called “Smart Grid” law was worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” to ComEd, Schwartz pointed out. But defense attorneys have pointed to the fact that the legislation originally passed the General Assembly during lawmakers’ 2011 spring session, well before any of the allegedly corrupt contracts were inked, and that Madigan and his counterpart in the Senate had already committed to override then-Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto on the law that summer.
Madigan testified that, like he’d done for many people over the years, he’d passed Olivo’s resume on to McClain. The former speaker took steps to distance himself from what McClain did after he’d referred jobseekers to his longtime friend.
But Schwartz on Wednesday sought to prove otherwise, reminding the jury of how another former alderman, Michael Zalewski of Chicago’s 23rd Ward, also on the city’s Southwest Side, became the last Doherty subcontractor in spring 2018.
At the time, Zalewski was about to retire after years in city council and was looking for lobbying work – a common career path after office. Schwartz played clips of four wiretapped calls from May 16, 2018, in which Madigan, McClain, then-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and ComEd executive Fidel Marquez discuss bringing on Zalewski under Doherty’s contract. At the time, Marquez was not yet cooperating with the FBI.
“In one short day, Madigan makes the ask: ‘Get my guy hired,’ snaps his fingers and it’s done. Zalewski’s added,” Schwartz said, reminding jurors that the former alderman was paid $45,000 “for doing no work.”
Schwartz’s story was a bit of an oversimplification; earlier in trial jurors heard calls dating back to the previous month in which McClain discussed Madigan’s request to find Zalewski work with ComEd. Marquez had also testified that he’d intended to actually give Zalewski assignments, though the specific project for which the former alderman’s expertise would’ve been needed was pushed off.
But Schwartz’s larger aim was to refute Madigan’s testimony that he merely passed along resumes and occasionally asked for updates to prevent against being caught flat-footed if asked about the status of a job recommendation.
The prosecutor pointed to the fact that in the last wiretapped call on May 16, 2018, Madigan asked McClain if Doherty would be reaching out to Zalewski so he could tell the former alderman that when he informed him of the good news.
“He’s the one bringing up Doherty and ComEd,” Schwartz said. “He knew (Doherty) was a pass-through.”
Further, Schwartz urged the jury to note the unusual nature of Madigan being the one to inform Zalewski about his contract, saying it was proof the speaker “controlled” the contract.
“Think about it: this is a public official making a job offer on behalf of ComEd,” Schwartz said, adding that Zalewski hadn’t submitted a resume or sat for an interview. “Because this is Madigan’s job. This is a bribe.”
Not long after, call records show that Madigan did call Zalewski, though there’s no recording of that call as neither phone had been wiretapped.
At one point during his time on the witness stand earlier this month, Madigan agreed with McClain attorney Patrick Cotter’s contention that he didn’t “know or care about the details” of McClain’s efforts to find work for another of Madigan’s allies, former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo.
Schwartz on Wednesday extrapolated that sentiment to Zalewski’s case and that of the other subcontractors.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this sequence shows you that was not true,” Schwartz said. “Madigan is following up, he’s making sure it gets done, and he’s making the job offer. These are not disinterested job recommendations.”
Schwartz also pointed to how members of the alleged conspiracy “talk when they think nobody’s listening,” especially wiretapped calls between McClain and former ComEd exec John Hooker.
In one February 2019 conversation, McClain and former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker discussed having come up with the subcontractor arrangement in 2011, starting with Olivo. By the time of the call, Doherty had spent years paying three other Madigan allies under his contract, while other lobbyists close to Madigan had also taken on two of the do-nothing contractors for periods of time.
“We had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us,” McClain told Hooker. “It’s just that simple … So if you want to make it a federal court suit, okay, but that’s how simple it is.”
Hooker agreed, asserting that the arrangement was “clean for all of us.”
“Right. We don’t have to worry about whether or not – I’m just making this up – whether or not Mike Zalewski Sr., is doing any work or not,” McClain said, referring to a former Chicago alderman who’d been put on Doherty’s contract the summer before, after he’d retired from the city council. “That’s up to Jay Doherty to prove that.”
In another wiretapped call 10 months earlier, McClain and Hooker discussed Madigan’s request to add Zalewski to Doherty’s roster.
“That has paid off for us in the past, Michael. It took me and you to think of that, though,” Hooker said. “I think he (Madigan) thought I might have been crazy when I suggested that.”
“Those aren’t words you use to describe a regular business deal,” Schwartz said.
Keeping in tradition with the rest of trial – which was originally scheduled to end before Christmas – predictions about timelines quickly went out the window after U.S. District Judge John Blakey said he’d call an early lunch so prosecutors could launch into closing arguments as soon as possible.
Instead, attorneys had to finish arguments about various loose ends before Blakey could even begin reading nearly 100 pages of jury instructions – a dry recitation interrupted only by the opening bars of the 1970s classic “Disco Inferno” as a phone went off in the gallery. By the time the jury came back from lunch ready to hear closing arguments, it was already after 2 p.m.
The late start will likely push the conclusion of closing arguments to Monday, delaying the jury’s first opportunity for deliberation until after the government’s rebuttal.
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