Seizing on a tactic strengthened by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, defense attorneys in the Michael Madigan corruption trial began their cross-examination of a key witness Tuesday by trying to distinguish between exchanging jobs for official actions and simply currying favor with the formidable ex-House speaker.
Fidel Marquez, the onetime head of ComEd’s governmental affairs team, spent nearly 15 hours over four days of direct examination telling the jury about a scheme to hire Madigan’s allies as consulting subcontractors and doing myriad other favors to bring the utility back into the speaker’s good graces.
At the outset of his questioning, however, defense attorney Patrick Cotter sought to paint the effort as legal lobbying, not bribes.
“You are not testifying at this trial that, in your mind, the purpose of this conspiracy was to trade jobs at ComEd?” asked Cotter, who represents Madigan’s co-defendant, former lobbyist Michael McClain.
“I said it was to consider ComEd’s legislative agenda (favorably),” answered Fidel Marquez, a former ComEd executive who pleaded guilty to bribery in 2020 and is cooperating with the government.
“Not exchange jobs for actions,” Cotter said.
“Looking at it favorably, to my mind, is an action,” Marquez said.
“Having a positive favorable attitude toward ComEd legislation was the purpose of the conspiracy you were in?” Cotter said.
“Yes,” Marquez answered.
That distinction – between trying to influence Madigan and executing an explicit transaction – could make all the difference for the defendants, at least when it comes to the ComEd allegations.
A Supreme Court decision earlier this year made clear that a bribery conviction requires proving a premeditated exchange of benefits for official actions. “Gratuities,” or gifts given to politicians after the fact, are not illegal, the court ruled this summer.
The jury’s instructions in Madigan’s case likely will include new language laying out the “exchange” that prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt to secure a conviction on the bribery counts.
That’s a legal hurdle that did not exist last year in the “ComEd Four” case, where McClain and three others were convicted on all counts related to the same alleged conduct.
Marquez was on the stand for the bulk of last week, during which jurors heard and saw McClain’s relentless requests – allegedly on behalf of Madigan – that ComEd hire Madigan’s favored associates.
Over and over, Marquez testified that he and other ComEd insiders complied with the requests so that Madigan would look favorably upon ComEd-friendly legislation in Springfield.
Marquez, one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, is back on the stand for a fourth day. His cross-examination could be lengthy.
The former ComEd executive began working with the FBI in early 2019 after agents confronted him at his mother’s home and played incriminating calls captured on a secret wiretap.
He went on to make multiple undercover recordings of his own, both audio and video, that provided the backbone for the biggest single allegation in the indictment: that Madigan supported ComEd-friendly legislation in exchange for a stream of benefits from the utility.
Marquez pleaded guilty in 2020 to conspiracy to commit bribery. In exchange for his truthful testimony, prosecutors have said they will recommend a sentence of probation instead of prison time.
Madigan, 82, of Chicago, who served for decades as speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the state Democratic Party, faces racketeering charges alleging he ran his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise.
Both Madigan and McClain, 77, a former ComEd contract lobbyist from downstate Quincy, have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
As Marquez’s direct examination wrapped up Tuesday, prosecutors showed another slew of emails and recordings in which McClain pushed ComEd to hire people with political connections.
Madigan seemed particularly interested in getting a job for Vanessa Berrios, daughter of then-Cook County Democratic boss Joseph Berrios. The speaker apparently first floated the idea to McClain in a December 2018 phone call, which was played for jurors.
“My thought was that there might be a place for her at ComEd,” Madigan told McClain.
In the ensuing months, McClain emailed Marquez at least twice about getting ComEd to hire Berrios, who had worked for her father when he headed the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
In one email with the subject line “Our Friend” – a reference to Madigan – McClain wrote to Marquez that “I get asked about her every Monday.” Jurors have previously heard that Madigan and McClain met regularly on Mondays.
“Can we get our people to move?” McClain wrote in the email, which had Vanessa Berrios’ resume attached.
Berrios ultimately was offered an interview with ComEd, Marquez testified Tuesday, but declined to take it.
In spring 2019, ComEd insider John Hooker told Marquez they were considering hiring former Madigan chief of staff Tim Mapes, who was ousted from the Speaker’s office in 2018 after being accused of sexual harassment.
Former CEO Anne Pramaggiore had met with Mapes, Hooker said in an April 9 phone call secretly recorded by Marquez. Pramaggiore suggested that they “hide (Mapes’) contract in someone else’s.”
“I says, what you could do is put him in as a consultant with McClain,” Hooker told Marquez on the phone.
Madigan also had an interest in getting work for Jeffrey Rush, the son of longtime U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush. Jeffrey Rush had worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections, but got in trouble for having a sexual relationship with a parolee.
“This is a guy that I’m gonna want to help somewhere along the road,” Madigan told McClain in an August 2018 phone call.
When McClain floated the idea to Marquez in May 2019, Marquez told him that that might be a bridge too far.
“I appreciate you being clear on his indiscretions,” said Marquez, who by that point was cooperating with the government and had secretly recorded the meeting on video. “That makes it hard for me to place him in good conscience within the company … I’m just being honest.”
Near the end of Marquez’s direct examination Tuesday, prosecutors played a lengthy wiretapped recording from Feb 22, 2019, where Pramaggiore, Marquez, and McClain discussed who was going to be the Madigan point-person now that McClain was looking to step down.
. “We’re in a conundrum,” McClain said on the call. McClain said, the “speaker called me up and said, ‘You know, Mike, um, we have this green set of bills that they want to do. Exelon Generation wants to do something.… I always used you as the point person. But you’re not here anymore, so who’s the point person?’”
Later in the call, McClain told Marquez whoever the new point person was, they have to have the speaker’s trust.
“And that person’s gotta be very discreet,” McClain said. “And whoever that person is talking for the company, let’s say it’s you. Uh, there’s a code, right?”
At the end of the call, Pramaggiore told Marquez he should make a recommendation to new ComEd CEO Joseph Dominguez that the utility should consider making the point person McClain or Hooker.
“They’re seasoned. They know what they’re doing. The speaker will accept them,” Pramaggiore said.
The day after the call, McClain sent a lengthy email to the group saying Hooker should be the point person for then-state Senate President John Cullerton, and that he’d talk to lobbyist Will Cousineau, Madigan’s former political director, about playing that role with the speaker.
“Will has our Friend’s confidence right now,” McClain wrote. “… Our Friend is very very cautious about letting people know and do what he needs done.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
