Madigan ally testifies he was rewarded with no-work contracts as ‘good soldier’ for speaker

[November 22, 2024]  By Hannah Meisel

CHICAGO – The first time Ed Moody ever took a vacation with his wife was a decade ago, marking their 25th wedding anniversary.

Prior to that, Moody used all his vacation days – plus most weekends and many evenings – doing political work for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Even after enjoying time spent truly off, Moody returned to a relentless schedule of the door-to-door campaigning he did best for another five years until FBI agents showed up at his door one afternoon in May 2019.

Another five years later, Moody entered a federal courtroom on Wednesday under an immunity agreement with prosecutors, took the witness stand and proceeded to testify against his longtime political boss as Madigan stared from the defense table, his mouth a hard line.

Moody testified that despite doing little to no work to earn the money, he spent nearly seven years collecting $4,500 each month, paid indirectly from electric utility Commonwealth Edison through a series of ComEd lobbyists connected to Madigan. Between mid-2012 and late 2018, Moody received $354,000, rarely interacting with the lobbyists who signed his checks.

Instead, Moody told the jury that Madigan arranged the no-work contracts for him contingent on him maintaining his campaign work for the speaker.

“Do the political work, keep the contract,” Moody said Wednesday, characterizing his understanding of the arrangement. “Don’t do the political work, don’t keep the contract.”

The feds allege Moody’s monthly checks were part of a larger bribery scheme in which Madigan solicited ComEd for jobs and contracts for his political allies and the utility obliged in exchange for favorable legislation in Springfield. The former speaker’s trial, which encompasses bribery, racketeering and extortion charges that extend beyond the ComEd allegations, is in its fifth week of testimony and is expected to stretch into mid-January.

Moody told the jury how he and his twin brother Fred first met Madigan as young men out on one of their long walks near their homes on Chicago’s Southwest Side in late 1989 or early 1990. After demonstrating aptitude for door-to-door campaigning for a south suburban elected official the Moody brothers knew through family, they were quickly recommended to Madigan’s 13th Ward Democratic Organization and not long after that were invited to become co-precinct captains ahead of the 1992 election cycle.

“I absolutely loved it,” Moody said of the precinct captain work, which included getting to know the residents of about 450 homes while going door-to-door not only during campaign season but also to inform them of local, state and federal government services they might not know about. He described it as “such a privilege” to be invited into voters’ homes and be treated “like family.”

Previous witnesses in Madigan’s trial were questioned about the Moody brothers. While Madigan’s longtime political director said they put in “innumerable hours” and described them as “very, very good” at connecting with voters, another former 13th Ward precinct captain agreed with the assertion from the former speaker’s attorney that they were “braggarts.” Madigan softly laughed when the witness was asked if he spoke with the Moodys and he replied simply that “I tried not to.”

After spending thousands of hours knocking doors during that campaign, Moody asked the speaker for help finding a job that paid $40,000 a year, which he said “doesn’t sound like a lot but it was back then.” Asked if he interviewed for the job at the Cook County Courthouse in Bridgeview where he’d spend the next 23 years , Moody said, “not really, no.”

Within a few election cycles, the Moody twins’ reputations were cemented as the most effective campaigners within Madigan’s political organization. Moody recalled in detail how he and his brother were able to flip Republican precincts for Democratic candidates and told the jury how they orchestrated a political strategy to win back a south suburban state House seat during the 1996 cycle.

That narrow win ended up providing Madigan with the final member he needed to win back the House speaker’s gavel, which he’d lost in the 1994 Republican wave. The winner, state Rep. Kevin McCarthy, would go on to be the lead sponsor for a key piece of ComEd-backed legislation 15 years later, which prosecutors allege was a cornerstone in the bribery scheme.

In 2011, after two decades of steady campaign work – which eventually turned from volunteer hours to paid labor – Moody approached Madigan with a request. As he approached his 50th birthday, he realized he needed to save more for his retirement, despite the pension guaranteed to him from his years working for Cook County government. Moody asked the speaker if he could connect him with some political consulting work in order to earn an extra $45,000 a year.

But Moody said the speaker didn’t give him an answer in their initial meeting, and he never heard from Madigan afterward. The lack of response from their political mentor made both him and his brother “hurt and upset.” So, Moody set up another meeting with the speaker, this time with his twin in tow.

On Wednesday, he described the emotional meeting and said the normally taciturn Madigan grew upset too.

Former Cook County Commissioner Ed Moody, a loyal foot soldier for ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, testified this week at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Madigan’s trial. (Capitol News Illinois illustration; courthouse photo by Hannah Meisel; Moody headshot courtesy of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds Office)

“He said, ‘calm down, calm down,’” Moody recalled. “He said ‘you’ll get your contract.’ … As the conversation was settling down a bit, Mr. Madigan said, ‘This is how I reward my good soldiers.’”

Moody testified a contract was arranged about a half hour later with Madigan’s longtime friend and advisor Mike McClain, who had spent decades lobbying for ComEd in Springfield.

For the next two years, Moody made calls to about a dozen legislators each month asking if they or their constituents had any problems with ComEd service – or other utilities for the members who weren’t in ComEd’s northern Illinois service territory – and then directed them to McClain.

Moody’s efforts took about an hour or two a month, except for when he instead passed out ComEd flyers while going door-to-door for his own campaign for Worth Township Highway Commissioner in the spring of 2013. Instead of billing McClain for the monthly calls, Moody’s invoice for that time period indicated he’d done a “four month door to door canvas on consumer input” for ComEd.

In 2014, Moody’s contract was shifted to Jay Doherty, a longtime lobbyist who contracted with ComEd on city matters. Moody testified that he only met Doherty twice: at the beginning of their contract and at the end, nearly three years later.

He affirmed that he never did any work for Doherty or ComEd, and that the only “assignment” he’d been given was to “Keep knocking on doors and to be on call.”

Moody was moved off Doherty’s contract in late 2016 when Moody was appointed to an open seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners after its previous occupant died. Since Doherty lobbied at the city and county levels, there was a concern that it would be inappropriate for Doherty to lobby his own contractor, a previous witness testified.

He was then moved onto contract with Shaw Decremer, a longtime Madigan staffer-turned-lobbyist who Moody had worked under on campaigns in the past. But despite their preexisting relationship, the two never met in person during the 14 months Decremer signed Moody’s monthly checks.

Moody testified that he did once see Decremer walking in downtown Chicago, but he was on the phone and didn’t stop to chat – but gave him a thumbs up as they passed on the sidewalk.

Moody’s contract shifted a final time in early 2018, to lobbyist and former state Rep. John Bradley, whose paperwork with Moody specifically said he’d be consulting on ComEd-related matters. Moody said he found that prospect exciting.

But a few weeks after Moody inked the contract with Bradley, he testified that he ran into Madigan while campaigning in the 13th Ward on behalf of a Madigan-backed candidate. Moody said he told the speaker he was concerned that he hadn’t gotten any assignments from Bradley.

“He said, ‘You have nothing to worry about,’” Moody recalled the speaker saying. “’What you’re doing right now is what I want, it’s what he wants, it’s what ComEd wants. You didn’t sign a contract with ComEd. You signed a contract with John Bradley.’”

“What did he mean by ‘doing right now?’” Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur asked.

“My politics, my campaign work,” Moody replied.

During Moody’s testimony in last year’s ComEd Four” trial – in which McClain, Doherty and two other former ComEd executives were convicted for their role in bribing Madigan – MacArthur asked Moody why he’d sent her an email the previous month requesting she state in court that she didn’t believe Moody knowingly sent out false invoices.

“I didn’t want anybody to think I knowingly tried to defraud ComEd,” Moody said. “It was never my intention to defraud really anybody.”

The exchange was not repeated on Wednesday.

But his arrangement with Bradley didn’t last, as Moody was appointed to be Cook County Recorder of Deeds in late 2018. Moody said McClain informed him that he could no longer be a subcontractor while in that role because “I was too close to ComEd.” Moody testified that he didn’t understand what McClain meant.

In wiretapped phone calls played during last year’s ComEd trial, the speaker told McClain it might be best to “pull back” on payments to Moody. McClain then called Bradley to tell him and suggested he pay Moody for half of December 2018 and say, “Merry Christmas, Ed, from the Bradleys.”

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.