4 decades after rising to power and nearly 4 years since his fall, former Speaker Madigan goes to trial

[October 19, 2024]  By Hannah Meisel

CHICAGO – On a late October day in Springfield nearly five years ago, then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan exited a private caucus meeting and strode up to a group of waiting reporters in one of the state Capitol’s vast marble halls.

It was lawmakers’ first day back in the Statehouse since wrapping up a historically productive spring legislative session in which Democrats – emboldened by major wins during the 2018 midterm election cycle – raised Illinois’ minimum wage, legalized recreational marijuana and enshrined abortion rights into state law, among other priorities.

But in the months that followed, Democrats’ celebrations gave way to a growing anxiety that the feds had trained their microscope on Springfield.

A steady drip of news leaks during the summer of 2019 began to outline a criminal probe with Madigan at its center, though indictments and highly visible FBI raids of other state and local elected Democrats later that summer and fall muddied the emerging picture.

And as General Assembly members settled back into the Capitol for their two-week fall veto session, the powerful speaker was dealing with fallout from the latest action taken by the feds against a prominent new target. Hours earlier, a member of Madigan’s House Democratic leadership team had been hauled into court after his arrest on a charge that he bribed a sitting state senator who happened to be cooperating with the FBI.

In a rare – and brief – availability with reporters in the crowded and noisy hallway off the Statehouse rotunda, the longtime speaker said he would take steps for House members to expel the representative from the body if he did not resign.

But quickly, the questions turned to why Madigan’s name had shown up in subpoenas made public after the spate of recent FBI searches and if he’d been contacted by the feds –which the speaker met with shrugs and a flat “no.” In response to a reporter asking whether he was a target of the investigation, Madigan issued a categorical denial.

“No, I’m not a target of anything,” he said.

Within the year, however, Madigan would be proven wrong as prosecutors filed the first in a series of bombshell charges alleging the longtime speaker had been the beneficiary of a yearslong bribery scheme.

And in those filings, the speaker, who for decades had been referred to as “the Velvet Hammer” for his quiet but forceful approach to political leadership, would be given a new nickname by the feds: Public Official A.

Now, half a decade – and a stunning political fall – later, the formerly powerful speaker will spend the next two months in a Chicago federal courtroom watching as his long-awaited corruption trial unfolds to determine whether he picks up another moniker: convicted felon.

Public Official A

Opening statements in Madigan’s trial are expected to begin Monday afternoon after a grueling two weeks of jury selection finally concludes with the seating of the last two alternate jurors.

During the six-day process, the former speaker took careful notes on each prospective juror on a yellow legal pad and occasionally conferred with his attorneys, displaying the same fastidiousness in the courtroom that garnered him power over his five decades in Springfield.

By the time he was elected speaker in 1983, Madigan had already gained a reputation for the types of shrewd political calculations designed to protect and grow his House Democratic caucus, which, in turn, would keep him in power.

Notwithstanding a two-year interruption of that reign when Republicans briefly won control of the Illinois House in the mid-1990s, Madigan was speaker for 36 years, making him the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S. history.

In the first several months of what would ultimately become his last term as House speaker, Madigan was, in some ways, operating at near-peak political power.

The “Blue Wave” election cycle in 2018 expanded Madigan’s Democratic caucus to its largest number yet and wiped out his biggest political nemesis: Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

As a candidate and then as governor, Rauner had spent the previous five years spending millions of his own dollars painting Madigan as not just the root of Illinois’ fiscal problems but also fundamentally corrupt. The messaging was at least somewhat effective, and Democratic majorities in the General Assembly shrank over the course of two election cycles.

As Rauner dug his heels in proposals to weaken labor unions – one of Madigan’s key constituencies – the new governor’s political fight with the speaker morphed into a legislative stalemate that plunged the state into a two-year budget impasse and ballooned Illinois’ deficit to nearly $17 billion. It only ended when Republicans in the House and Senate defied Rauner and sided with Democrats to pass a budget deal.

When billionaire JB Pritzker was sworn in as governor in early 2019, Madigan finally had an executive he could work with for the first time in more than 15 years. The previous nearly two decades had been marked by enmity with not only Rauner, but also Govs. Pat Quinn and Rod Blagojevich – both Democrats.

Pritzker had kept his distance from Madigan during his campaign, trying to avoid any perception that he was the polarizing speaker’s favored candidate during a crowded primary run. He was, however, initially reticent to criticize Madigan’s handling of sexual harassment allegations in both his political operation and speaker’s office that came to light in 2018 at the height of the #MeToo movement.

But Madigan had weathered the storm by firing the accused and keeping his focus on winning legislative races. And by the following spring, he was back to making significant political maneuvers that allowed for the passage of big-ticket progressive items like legalizing marijuana, as well as rare bipartisan support for a state budget, a $45 billion infrastructure plan and massive gambling expansion.

Though Madigan’s legislative efforts helped to paper over intraparty rifts that had formed the previous year, the rebuilt goodwill wouldn’t last.

The steady drip of news about FBI searches executed on Madigan’s close political allies in mid-2019 would turn into a deluge of news about the feds’ growing criminal investigation, with the speaker at its center.

Those reports were interrupted, at least temporarily, by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 as a commission set up by Madigan to study Illinois’ ethics laws did its work. But the pressure returned at full force in July of that year when then-U.S. Attorney John Lausch called an unusually rare press conference on a Friday afternoon.

In the news conference – and a lengthy charging document – prosecutors revealed that electric utility giant Commonwealth Edison had admitted that over a nine-year period, the company had bribed the speaker, whom the feds referred to as “Public Official A.”

ComEd agreed to pay a $200 million fine and cooperate with the feds’ investigation surrounding Madigan in taking responsibility for giving jobs and lucrative no-work contracts to the speaker’s political allies in exchange for favorable legislation in Springfield.

Political fallout

Soon after, some of Madigan’s newest members – especially suburban women who’d been elected during the “Blue Wave” campaign cycle that boosted the House Democratic caucus to its biggest majority ever – began pushing for his ouster.

As the speaker’s brand became toxic within his own party, Republicans and business interests used the political situation to their advantage that fall. Groups opposed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature graduated income tax campaign promise spent millions on a campaign to defeat the ballot referendum, suggesting voters couldn’t trust Springfield politicians like Madigan with their tax dollars.

Voters rejected the constitutional amendment, in addition to ousting a sitting Illinois Supreme Court justice for the first time in history after opponents spent big on ads calling him “Madigan’s favorite judge.”

Following the election, the governor and other Democrats laid responsibility for those losses at Madigan’s feet. And just a few weeks later, the speaker’s close friend and political advisor Mike McClain – a longtime lobbyist for ComEd – was indicted for orchestrating the alleged Madigan bribery scheme along with three other former executives and lobbyists for the utility.

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan is pictured voting for his successor, Emanuel “Chris” Welch, on the floor of the Bank of Springfield Center in January 2021. It was serving as the House chamber at the time due to social distancing requirements brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)

Meanwhile, the number of Democratic House members who’d publicly committed to voting against Madigan’s coming bid for a historic 19th term as speaker kept growing.

By the time lawmakers returned to Springfield for their “lame duck” session in early January 2021, the group had reached critical mass, despite Madigan maintaining staunch support from influential blocs like the House’s Black and Latino caucuses, as well as many rank-and-file members.

In a series of tense closed-door meetings in Springfield’s cavernous Bank of Springfield Center, which the House rented out to allow for pandemic-era social distancing, Madigan lost several rounds of votes – ultimately “suspending” his campaign for speaker and allowing the election for a new speaker to play out.

In the following weeks, Madigan would resign from the House seat he’d held for 50 years, followed by stepping down from his longtime role as chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.

It would be another year until Madigan himself was indicted.

Legal arguments

In March of 2022, Madigan was charged with 22 counts of racketeering, bribery, wire fraud and extortion. Charged alongside him was McClain, whom the feds alleged acted as the conduit – and sometimes muscle – for multiple bribery schemes beyond ComEd’s.

After prosecutors added additional charges to Madigan’s indictment later in 2022, he now faces 24 counts in a case that frames Madigan’s power in government, politics and as a partner in his law firm as a “criminal enterprise” meant to maintain and increase his power and enrich his allies.

The former speaker again vehemently denied the charges, and since then has waited more than 2 ½ years out of the public eye for his day in court.

Much of the next two months in court will be a retreading of arguments and evidence already heard in three related cases the feds have tried at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse since last year, including the seven-week “ComEd Four” trial that ended in convictions for McClain and his co-defendants in 2023.

Also last year, a jury found Madigan’s longtime chief of staff guilty on charges of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury investigating Madigan and McClain.

But last month, a jury deadlocked in the trial of former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza, who’d been charged with bribing Madigan in a similar manner as ComEd with a contract for the speaker’s political ally who never did any work for his $22,500 payout.

The mistrial, as well as a U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer that narrowed the definition of bribery in federal law, could be a boon to Madigan’s defense strategy. But before jury selection began earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John Blakey declined to dismiss bribery charges in Madigan’s case in light of the high court’s ruling.

Though many specifics from those prior trials will be recycled during Madigan’s, prosecutors will call new and highly anticipated witnesses like political consultant Alaina Hampton, who set off a firestorm in 2018 when she accused Madigan of mishandling her sexual harassment complaint against a fellow campaign operative. Also expected on the witness stand is former Chicago Ald. Danny Solis, whose testimony the feds will use to finally reveal evidence that has been teased for years in legal filings.

Solis had been cooperating with the FBI when he secretly recorded Madigan during meetings and phone calls in 2017 and 2018 about legal work Solis could throw to the speaker’s property tax law firm. In exchange for steering clients to Madigan, the feds allege, the speaker agreed to help get Solis appointed to a lucrative state board position, though it never materialized.

In one such wiretapped conversation, Solis and Madigan were discussing a real estate development project in the alderman’s ward. The feds allege the developer understood that Solis – in his capacity as chair of the city council’s zoning committee – would receive approvals for the project contingent on hiring Madigan’s law firm.

“I think they understand how this works, you know, the quid pro quo,” Solis allegedly told Madigan, to which the speaker replied, “Okay…Very good.”

But as the pair prepped for a meeting with the developer the following month, Madigan advised Solis not to use the phrase “quid pro quo,” instead encouraging the alderman to develop a false pretext on how to gently sell his legal services.

“You’re just recommending…because if they don’t get a good result on their real estate taxes, the whole project will be in trouble…So you want high quality representation,” Madigan allegedly coached Solis, according to court documents.

Long road to a jury

Jury selection for Madigan’s trial was always going to be a slow and deliberate process. Due to the high-profile nature of the case, Judge Blakey this summer agreed to keep prospective jurors’ names anonymous and question them individually after completing a lengthy questionnaire.

But selecting the 12-member jury and six alternate jurors from the nearly 200-person jury pool took more than twice as long as originally scheduled. By the time the final alternates are chosen on Monday, the seven-day process will have lasted longer than the entire related AT&T trial last month.

The dozens of prospective jurors who made it into the courtroom for questioning were largely white and were also disproportionately older, likely due to the number of those working-age pool members who were immediately eliminated by their inability to commit to an estimated 11 weeks of trial.

After spending on average more than half an hour with each prospective juror during questioning aimed at flagging any unconscious biases, the parties finally found their 12th member on Thursday morning. The jury includes a racially diverse group of eight women and four men ranging from their early 20s to retirees.

Jury members include a teacher, an Amazon warehouse worker and a Goodwill donation center employee. The jury also has a number of health care workers, including an overnight nurse and two who work in patient scheduling at separate Chicago hospitals.

The final juror works at yet another Chicago hospital and told a Madigan attorney that he’d heard the speaker’s name but wasn’t sure what position he’d held.

“I know he’s been a longtime leader, well-known name in Illinois and the city but I – honestly, I’m a little embarrassed … I don’t follow politics that much,” he said.

But most of the jury is in the same boat. Some were vaguely aware of Madigan’s case and last year’s ComEd trial from headlines and mentions on TV news, though others had never heard the speaker’s name before.

One juror confessed that when she told her best friend about her jury summons, the friend predicted that she was being called for the Madigan case – and told her to “vote guilty” for the longtime Democratic powerbroker.

“She’s a Trumper,” the juror said of her friend, referring to her support for former President Donald Trump. “She really hates all Democrats except me, maybe.”

The same juror also elicited a rare moment of laughter from Madigan when she told his attorney Tom Breen that he looked like the actor Eric Roberts.

Even the judge joined in on the reaction shared by the rest of the courtroom.

“Eric Roberts?” Blakey repeated incredulously. “Wow.”

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.