Prosecution could rest next week in ‘Sphinx’ Madigan’s corruption trial

[December 10, 2024]  By Hannah Meisel

CHICAGO – After an extraordinarily short day of trial Monday, jurors may only remember one detail: those high up in Gov. JB Pritzker’s 2018 campaign had nicknamed then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan “Sphinx.”

The jury saw the mythological moniker in an email that Pritzker campaign-advisor-turned transition team director Nikki Budzinski sent internally in early December 2018 as Pritzker was preparing to meet with Madigan.

“Attached is a most recent Sphinx list of recommendations ahead of your meeting today,” Budzinski wrote, referring to a list of names Madigan was forwarding to the Pritzker team for consideration in hiring for the new administration.

Budzinski, who went on to serve as a senior advisor in the governor’s office before winning Illinois’ 13th Congressional District in 2022, was briefly called to the witness stand Monday morning in the former speaker’s corruption trial, which is in its eighth week of testimony. Trial adjourned after about an hour in order for U.S. District Judge John Blakey and other attorneys to attend the funeral of 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joel Flaum.

The congresswoman testified about receiving recommendations from Madigan for the Pritzker team to consider for the “at least 1,500” positions the new administration was hiring to fill. It was one iteration of this list that Budzinski attached to her email referring to the speaker as “Sphinx” on Dec. 4, 2018.

Though the visual representation of a sphinx is often associated with the massive Egyptian statue near the Great Pyramids of Giza, representations of sphinx-like characters in popular culture come from Greek mythology. “Oedipus Rex” depicts a sphinx as creature that won’t let anyone past unless they answer a riddle, and if answered incorrectly, the sphinx kills and eats the target.

Madigan attorney Lari Dierks tried to draw the rationale of Madigan’s “Sphinx” nickname out of Budzinski, asking if it was a joke about the speaker’s reputation in Springfield. But Budzinski demurred, saying it wasn’t her nickname and she never had conversations with other campaign staff about its origins.

The congresswoman testified for a little over 30 minutes Monday morning, providing jurors with little more insight than they’d already gleaned from former Madigan chief of staff Jessica Basham’s 2 ˝ hours on the witness stand last week.

Basham had been the one to maintain Madigan’s list, which eventually grew to 91 names over the course of Pritzker’s first year in office. More than a dozen of those names were forwarded by other Democratic legislators, and two came from retired Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain, Madigan’s longtime confidant and co-defendant in the current trial.

But none of those names were that of then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis, who had been working undercover with the FBI for two years in July 2018 when he asked Madigan to help him get appointed to a high-paying state board position. Prosecutors allege Madigan agreed to help Solis as a bribe for introducing him to real estate developers the speaker wanted to recruit as clients for his property tax appeals law firm.

Though Madigan said in a secretly recorded video Solis made in late November 2018 that his recommendation of Solis “doesn’t have to be in writing,” he indicated he’d be meeting with Pritzker in early December.

However, neither Budzinski nor Basham were questioned about Solis even once.

Budzinski testified that other influential political figures besides Madigan forwarded their own lists of names to Pritzker’s campaign. But she said the former speaker stands out in her memory as the elected official who followed up with Pritzker’s staff on hiring recommendations most frequently.

The congresswoman said she had “I would guess five” follow-up meetings with Madigan and Basham in the months after Pritzker’s January 2019 inauguration to deliver updates on which of the names from the speaker’s list had gotten hired.

Even before the inauguration, Budzinski felt the pressure to make sure no Madigan-recommended candidates were slipping through the cracks. Prosecutors showed an email from the morning of Christmas Eve 2018 regarding Paul Karas, name No. 31 on Madigan’s list, which indicated he’d be a candidate to lead the Illinois Department of Transportation.

“We need to call him at least, and perhaps maybe consider him for the #2 spot,” Budzinski wrote to fellow staffers. “The Speaker raised with JB yesterday. Just don’t want it to fall thru. Help!”

U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, IL-13, speaks to the Illinois Delegation’s Aug. 22 daily breakfast during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)

Karas ended up not being hired; the week after Pritzker promoted his pick for IDOT secretary from within the agency, Karas resigned from his post as New York Department of Transportation commissioner amid scrutiny of the department’s handling of commercial vehicle inspections.

But despite this intense attention on Madigan’s recommendations, Budzinski said Pritzker’s team gave just as much consideration to the names forwarded by the speaker as those recommended by the three other legislative leaders. Budzinski also said the Pritzker administration would “absolutely not” have hired anyone because they’d made a payment or promised a benefit to Madigan.

“Because that would be wrong and because we had a process and would never do that,” she testified.

The jury last week saw a version of Madigan’s recommendations list from October 2019 featuring Basham’s handwritten notes. At the end of the three-page list, Basham noted that 43 of the 91 recommendations had been taken up by the Pritzker administration – a “47% success rate,” she wrote.

Testimony from Acevedo?
Earlier on Monday, outside the presence of the jury, attorneys argued about the government’s motion to compel testimony from former Illinois state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, who allegedly received two no-work contracts from electric utility Commonwealth Edison and AT&T Illinois at Madigan’s direction.

Both companies paid hefty fines when they entered into deferred prosecution agreements acknowledging prosecutors’ allegations that they’d bribed Madigan in exchange for his help in pushing their preferred legislation in Springfield.

McClain was one of four former ComEd lobbyists and executives who were convicted last year for their roles in bribing Madigan. In September, however, a jury deadlocked after the trial of former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza, who had been charged with bribing Madigan by approving a nine-month $22,500 contract for Acevedo in 2017.

The company paid him indirectly through one of its contract lobbyists, according to payment records. ComEd also indirectly paid Acevedo $120,000 in 2017 and 2018 through three contract lobbyists.

Neither Acevedo nor any of the other subcontractors alleged to have collected a total of $1.3 million from ComEd from 2011 to 2019 have been charged with wrongdoing. But Acevedo did serve six months in prison for tax evasion uncovered as part of the government’s sprawling investigation into Madigan.

Judge Blakey on Friday ordered Acevedo to testify, immunizing him and ruling that he could not avoid appearing on the witness stand by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But his attorney argued Monday morning that Acevedo has dementia and asked that he at least be given a copy of his grand jury testimony to guide him as to what he’d previously admitted about his no-work contracts.

Though he’d been on witness lists in both the ComEd and AT&T trials, he wasn’t called either time.

The judge said he would meet with Acevedo on Tuesday afternoon to determine whether he is fit to take the witness stand.

Madigan’s attorneys on Monday also argued that prosecutors should drop charges related to AT&T after the government’s final witness list indicated they wouldn’t be calling former AT&T Illinois lobbyist Steve Selcke.

In the September trial, Selcke denied that he and his colleagues were seeking to bribe Madigan with Acevedo’s contract. The judge in that case is expected to rule this month on whether to acquit La Schiazza.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Madigan’s trial said they’re prepared to rest their case as early as Tuesday of next week.

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