After nearly seven weeks of evidence and arguments, a federal jury is deliberating the fate of the “ComEd Four,” a group of executives and lobbyists accused of bribing then-House Speaker Michael Madigan to win his influence over the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.
The jury began its discussions shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday after hearing nine hours of closing arguments over two days. They went home for the day at about 4:45 p.m. and will be back Wednesday morning.
In his rebuttal argument Tuesday, the lead prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, told the jury that the efforts to woo Madigan were like a “corruption toll” similar to something motorists must pay to continue on their trip on the state tollway.
And Madigan was the gatekeeper, Bhachu said.
“It was a corruption toll to make sure that Mr. Madigan was not an obstacle to their legislative agenda,” Bhachu said. “And they paid that toll every month, from 2011 to 2019 when they were caught.”
Attorneys for defendants, however, have argued that prosecutors failed to show any connection between payments the utility made to lobbying subcontractors and any official act taken by Madigan, the former Democratic leader long considered to be the most powerful politician in the state.
The ComEd Four case marks the most significant public corruption trial since former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted 12 years ago.
It has struck at the heart of Illinois politics itself, holding up a mirror not only to Madigan’s vaunted political operation but also the entire system of relationships between lobbyists, legislators and government-regulated utilities that rely on the General Assembly for its profits.
Trying to read tea leaves on how long the jury might deliberate is usually an effort in futility. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber told the parties that if there is no verdict by Thursday, he’ll ask the jury if they want to deliberate Friday as well, even though Fridays have been a day off since the trial began.
What is clear is that jurors will have to sift through a mountain of evidence, including dozens of wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded videos, hundreds of emails and internal documents, and the live testimony of some 50 witnesses, including current and former state legislators, ComEd executives, and Madigan insiders.
The indictment charges a total of nine counts, including a main bribery conspiracy count lodged against each of the four defendants. Other charges include circumventing internal business controls and the falsification of business records to allegedly hide the payments ComEd was making.
Charged are Michael McClain, 75, a longtime ComEd contract lobbyist and one of Madigan’s closest confidants; former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, 64, a lawyer and onetime rising star in Chicago’s corporate world; Jay Doherty, 69, a lobbyist and ex-president of the City Club of Chicago; and John Hooker, 74, who over a 44-year career worked his way from the utility’s mailroom to become its point man in Springfield.
The indictment alleged the four conspired to funnel $1.3 million in payments to ghost “subcontractors,” largely through Doherty’s company, who were actually Madigan’s cronies.
The utility also hired a clouted law firm run by political operative Victor Reyes, distributed numerous college internships within Madigan’s 13th Ward fiefdom, and blatantly backed former McPier chief Juan Ochoa, the friend of a Madigan ally, for an $80,000-a-year seat on the utility’s board of directors, the indictment alleged.
In return, prosecutors say, Madigan used his influence over the General Assembly to help ComEd score a series of huge legislative victories that not only rescued the company from financial instability but led to record-breaking, billion-dollar profits.
Among them was the 2011 smart grid bill that set a built-in formula for the rates ComEd could charge customers, avoiding battles with the Illinois Commerce Commission, according to the charges. ComEd also leaned on Madigan’s office to help pass the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016, which kept the formula rate in place and also rescued two nuclear plants run by an affiliated company, Exelon Generation.
Defense attorneys have argued over and over that the government is seeking to criminalize legal lobbying and job recommendations that are at the center of the state’s legitimate political system.
They ripped the government’s star witness, former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez, as a liar and opportunist who was so terrified when FBI agents confronted him in January 2019 that he flipped without even consulting a lawyer and agreed to secretly record his friends.
“We are here because the government scared Fidel Marquez to death,” attorney Jacqueline Jacobson, who represents Hooker, said in her closing argument Wednesday.
But Bhachu blasted the idea that Marquez was supposed to somehow approach them on the level when he was secretly wired up for investigators.
“How else are you going to get people to talk about criminal activity?” he said in rebuttal. “Go up to them and say, ‘Guess what? I’m working for the FBI! What are you going to tell me?'”
And if Marquez was “so desperate to lie,” Bhachu said, why didn’t he come up with a tall tale about Madigan going out of his way to help ComEd, rather than fumble on the witness stand when asked for a specific example?
Bhachu also scoffed at defense arguments that no one at ComEd mentioned having Madigan in their pocket at meetings, suggesting there was no effort to corruptly influence him.
“They didn’t talk about it because the defendants are not that stupid,” Bhachu said. “They didn’t advertise their criminal activity in an all-hands meeting at ComEd. They did not take out an ad in the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Sun-Times to say, ‘Guess what? We’re bribing Mike Madigan.'”
He also noted that the scheme went on for eight years. “And this type of conduct does not go on for that long if you’re foolish,” he said. “Secrecy was very important to this conspiracy.”
“We’re not talking about amateurs here,” Bhachu said. “They were not playing checkers, they were playing chess. And when it came to playing chess, Mr. McClain and the other defendants were grand masters of corruption.”
Earlier Tuesday, the jury heard closing arguments from Hooker and Doherty, rounding out more than five hour of remarks by the defense over the past two days.
In her hourlong argument, Jacobson said the feds had failed to prove Hooker “knowingly participated in a conspiracy to bribe Mike Madigan,” and that Hooker’s own testimony showed he had no corrupt intent when he hired two of the speaker’s associates, former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo and precinct captain Ray Nice, as subcontracted lobbyists in 2011.
Both Olivo and Nice were good hires, with deep relationships with local officials and working knowledge of the issues confronting the then-floundering utility, Jacobson said.
“Folks, this is not a bribery conspiracy, this is a business decision that John made in 2011. And a pretty good one,” Jacobson said.
She said that the wiretapped conversations at the center of the prosecution’s case only show Hooker “reminiscing” about his role with the company in 2011, not participation in some grand scheme that allegedly kept unfolding after his retirement.
“There is no way in the world that this man would brag about committing a crime,” Jacobson said, pointing at Hooker at the defense table. She asked the jury if Hooker would really “throw it all away, all 44 1/2 years (of his career), to join some conspiracy to benefit a company that he’d announced his retirement from?”
Michael Gillespie, the attorney for Doherty, sounded a similar theme, saying in his hourlong argument that of all the dozens of wiretaps and videotapes played in the trial, Doherty is on only two of them.
“Ladies and gentlemen, with all due respect to this table,” Gillespie said, gesturing toward prosecutors, “there is not a chance. Not a chance that they’ve proven (their case).”
Gillespie said that not only did Doherty have nothing to do with the plan to pay Madigan surrogates, he’s not even “a Madigan guy.”
“He doesn’t go to dinner with Madigan. He’s not on one of those tapes with Michael Madigan,” Gillespie said.
Gillespie pointed to the “Magic List” of Madigan-approved lobbyists cultivated by McClain, which was shown to the jury with fanfare by prosecutors last month.
“Lot of names on there. A lot of names. Look at them all,” Gillespie told jurors. “But you know who’s name is not on there? Jay Doherty. Jay’s not a Madigan guy. He’s not.”
Gillespie also reminded the jury they are being asked to pass judgment on a fellow citizen. “Mistakes in these courtrooms alter lives,” he said. “Mistakes in these courtrooms break hearts. It’s a heavy burden and it should be.”
In his rebuttal, Bhachu said the ComEd payments were going to the precinct captains who were going to make sure that Madigan got the votes to stay speaker. “When it came to the requests that were super important to Mike Madigan, this company was all in,” he said.
Prosecutors have also bluntly accused Pramaggiore and Hooker of lying on the witness stand when they testified in their own defense earlier this month.
In his closing argument Monday, McClain’s attorney, Patrick Cotter, said the prosecution’s case was a “conclusion in search of evidence” and suggested the defendants were “collateral damage” in the government’s yearslong quest to bring down Madigan.
“They already had their target. They already knew who was guilty — it was Mike Madigan,” Cotter said, adding that once prosecutors assumed the speaker was guilty, “then everyone near him begins to look guilty.”
Scott Lassar, lead attorney for Pramaggiore, told the jury that there was simply no evidence of any conspiracy.
“The reason the government didn’t prove their case is because their case was dead wrong,” Lassar said. “ComEd was not bribing Madigan.”
Bhachu, however, told jurors it took a wiretap on McClain’s phone to unravel the conspiracy. The prosecutor pointed out a series of emails and secretly recorded conversations involving McClain, including one call in which he said he stayed out of the newspaper for years because he’s “pretty discreet.”
Walking up and down behind the prosecution table as he looked at jurors, Bhachu took a particularly hard swing at an anecdote Cotter told in his opening statement, wondering whether buying a cup of coffee for his boss could be construed as a bribe.
“$1.3 million over eight years is not a cup of coffee,” Bhachu said. “It is a signal that something corrupt was happening here.”
