‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’: Secretly recorded videos show ComEd
lobbyists discussing alleged bribery scheme
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[March 30, 2023]
By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO – Longtime Commonwealth Edison contract lobbyist Jay Doherty
thought he was merely reminiscing and giving advice to a colleague and
friend in a February 2019 meeting set up by ex-ComEd executive Fidel
Marquez.
But Marquez was wearing a hidden camera, having just a few weeks prior
agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation of the utility’s
alleged bribery of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. FBI
agents had paid a 6 a.m. visit to his mother’s house where he’d been
staying in Chicago.
“This is just you and me talking,” Doherty told Marquez, detailing how
he’d been paying a handful of allies close to Madigan through his
lobbying contract with the utility for years. “I don’t even know who
else knows this.”
But Marquez’s camera ensured his conversation with Doherty would not
stay between the two of them. On Tuesday, a federal jury watched the
video along with an audience in a Chicago courtroom, with both Doherty
and Marquez looking on.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/30/images/ads/current/safetytip_sda_rohlfs_2023.png)
Doherty is one of three ex-ComEd lobbyists accused of orchestrating a
yearslong bribery scheme to curry favor with Madigan, along with former
ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore. On Tuesday, Doherty and Pramaggiore, along
with ex-lobbyists and codefendants Mike McClain and John Hooker, sat
stone-faced while the video played on several TV monitors in the
courtroom. Marquez was on the witness stand for a second day of
questioning by prosecutors.
Much of Monday and Tuesday centered on Doherty’s longstanding
arrangement in which he used a substantial portion of his monthly
lobbying stipend from ComEd to pay men close to the powerful House
speaker anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 per month.
But the long-running arrangement was potentially hitting a snag:
Pramaggiore had been promoted from her position as ComEd’s CEO that past
summer, and her replacement, Joe Dominguez, was a former federal
prosecutor from New Jersey.
As a newly minted cooperating witness in the government’s investigation,
Marquez set up meetings with Doherty, McClain and Hooker – and a phone
call with Pramaggiore – with dual purposes. The first goal was to get
them to acknowledge the subcontractors did little to nothing on the
company’s dime and were just a favor to Madigan.
The second goal was to address the possibility that Dominguez would
object to the arrangement, and Marquez was seeking advice from
Pramaggiore, McClain, Hooker and Doherty on how to explain the
subcontractor arrangement to Dominguez.
After Marquez asked Doherty point blank what the subcontractors do,
Doherty responded, “not much,” and explained that he barely even knew
any of them, aside from his newest acquisition, former Chicago Alderman
Mike Zalewski.
But he did give Marquez a piece of advice:
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/30/images/ads/current/LPL_small%201.gif)
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with those guys,” Doherty said. “...And
to keep Mike Madigan happy, I think that’s worth it.”
In the video, Doherty recounted how the first of the subcontractors –
former Chicago Ald. Frank Olivo – came on board with him years earlier.
“John Hooker calls and said, ‘Jay, I got a sub(contractor) for
you…Olivo,” Doherty recalled. “‘We’re going to pay him every month and
you just —’
Doherty held up four fingers to indicate the $4,000 monthly stipend
Olivo would be paid out of what would eventually become Doherty’s
$37,000 per month lobbying contract with ComEd. Doherty would eventually
add two of Madigan’s top precinct captains from the speaker’s 13th Ward
political base on Chicago’s southwest side: Ray Nice and Ed Moody, at
$5,000 and $4,500 monthly, respectively. Zalewski was the last addition
after his retirement from the Chicago City Council in the summer of
2018, at $4,000 per month.
In a separate lunch a couple weeks prior to the meeting with Doherty,
Marquez secretly recorded Hooker – his direct predecessor at ComEd – at
Chicago’s Union League Club.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Oct/22/images/ads/current/graue_sda_FAIR_2022.png)
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![](../images/033023PIX/news_b73.jpg)
Former ComEd lobbyists Mike McClain
(left) and Jay Doherty are pictured in secretly recorded videos from
2019 that were shown to a jury Tuesday in their federal trial for
accused bribery and corruption. (Screenshots from video presented as
evidence in court)
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/30/images/ads/current/stjohns_lda_EASTER_2023.png)
Federal agents had directed Marquez to schedule the meeting with Hooker
on the pretense that Marquez was looking for career advice, though he
also sought Hooker’s counsel on how to approach Dominguez about the
subcontractors.
“Well, I was the one who…I had to explain it to Frank,” Hooker said in
the video where only the top of his head made an appearance most of the
time.
Marquez testified Hooker had been referring to Frank Clark, the CEO of
ComEd who directly preceded Pramaggiore. Hooker said he “couldn’t afford
it,” referring to the cost of Doherty’s contract under his purview as
senior vice president of external affairs at ComEd – the utility’s top
internal lobbyist.
Doherty’s contract had been paid out of the CEO’s budget ever since, and
Marquez told Hooker that he worried Dominguez wouldn’t approve the
massive expense, which had ballooned to $400,000 annually.
Hooker’s advice was to have Doherty write a report on what each of the
subcontractors did.
But Marquez received conflicting advice from McClain at a similar lunch
meeting the two had in Springfield a couple weeks later.
“I would say to you, don’t put anything in writing,” McClain counseled
in between bites of pizza at Saputo’s, a staple restaurant in
Springfield’s political circles. “…All that can do is hurt ya.”
Marquez had testified Monday that he first learned of the subcontractors
in June 2013, after he’d been in his role as ComEd’s top lobbyist for
nearly a year and a half.
Marquez had received a forwarded email from Pramaggiore containing a
request from McClain to move one of the subcontractors, Ed Moody, from
his contract to Doherty’s “or someone else’s.”
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/30/images/ads/current/burtonview_sda_SFARM_2023.png)
“Can you clue me in?” Marquez wrote to McClain.
McClain responded with an “Of course…”
Marquez said he learned in a subsequent phone call that McClain had been
paying Moody out of his contract for a while at that point, and that
Doherty had been doing the same with Olivo and Nice. All three men,
McClain explained, were valuable to Madigan.
“I didn’t expect for them to be doing any work for ComEd…because I knew
they were brought on as a favor to Michael Madigan,” Marquez told the
jury Monday.
In a recording of a wiretapped phone call played for the jury from May
2018, before Marquez was cooperating with the feds, Pramaggiore told
McClain that she’d directed Marquez to add the not yet retired Zalewski
to Doherty’s contract.
“I told Fidel to hire him, to get it done,” Pramaggiore said.
But though Marquez said he’d thought Zalewski could be valuable to ComEd
while the utility renegotiated its franchise agreement with the city of
Chicago, he never ended up doing that work. Negotiations were put on
hold after then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he wouldn’t run for a third
term.
Marquez explained that he’d come to understand the subcontractor
arrangement as a way for ComEd to gain Madigan’s favor after years of
disdain for the utility.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Mar/30/images/ads/current/topflight_sda_SFARM_2023.png)
And nearly six years after learning about the subcontractors, it had
become Marquez’s job to justify the arrangement to ComEd’s new CEO.
Eventually, Marquez said, he had that conversation with Dominguez while
cooperating with the feds.
“‘There’s stuff I want to know, and there’s stuff I don’t want to
know,’” Dominguez allegedly said, per Marquez’s testimony.
The trial continues at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
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