It won’t be long before jurors meet behind closed doors to determine the fate of Michael Madigan, the longest-serving statehouse speaker in U.S. history. We don’t envy those 12 their task. Trying to keep straight the near-manic plotting of Madigan and his one-time right-hand man, former close friend and co-defendant Michael McClain between 2011 and 2019 — the period on which the feds focused — is complex enough for journalists and other close followers of politics. We can only imagine the challenges for those not enthralled by Illinois’ Byzantine political world.
In some respects, this long-awaited trial has felt anticlimactic. With so much happening locally, nationally and globally, Boss Madigan is yesterday’s news.
Yet the stories unearthed in the federal prosecution of Madigan are many and remarkable.
The trial has featured captivating moments, particularly once Madigan surprised everybody by taking the stand in his own defense. What most caught our attention as Madigan parried with Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu was how willing — even eager — Madigan was to separate himself from McClain, whom everyone in Springfield considered the gateway to the elusive Madigan when the speaker was the most powerful politician in the state.
Madigan had strategic reasons for this awkward distancing from his friend of more than four decades; part of the case against him rests on the assertion that McClain was acting as his agent in numerous dealings prosecutors allege comprised a criminal conspiracy.
Even so, Madigan’s depiction of his relationship with McClain, which began in 1975 when both served together in the General Assembly and well before Madigan rose to lead the House, seemed unnecessarily cold.
Bhachu asked Madigan more than once about his relationship with McClain, emphasizing how loyal McClain was to the speaker. In conversations with others, McClain famously referred to Madigan as “our friend” and “Himself,” as if Madigan were something greater than human. Five years ago, before McClain was charged but after it was clear he was under investigation, WBEZ reporters surprised him outside a Chicago restaurant and asked him, given the pressure the feds were putting on him to turn on Madigan, whether it would be hard to betray his longtime friend and idol.
“It would be hard to betray myself,” McClain responded.
So imagine how hurtful it must have been for McClain to sit in that courtroom on the 12th floor of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse and hear how Madigan answered questions about McClain’s fealty. Exhibiting a flowery thank-you note McClain sent to Madigan in late 2016 expressing great appreciation for their long friendship, Bhachu asked Madigan if he ever expressed similar sentiments to McClain. “Not that I can recall,” Madigan stated bluntly. Not once? “Again, not that I can recall.”
Asked whether he felt any loyalty to McClain, Madigan said, “I don’t think I was as loyal to him as he was to me.”
Didn’t Madigan trust McClain with highly sensitive assignments? “Sometimes.”
Oof.
Last week, on direct questioning from his attorneys, Madigan confessed that he and McClain no longer were friends. That revelation made some of us want to cry out, “Thank God!”
McClain is on trial now for the second time in connection with his role in Madigan’s alleged criminal enterprise. He was convicted in 2023 along with three others in the so-called ComEd Four trial, which centered on assertions the utility was bribing Madigan for favorable legislation. All four defendants have appealed to overturn their convictions or, at least, to get a new trial following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that undercut the legal interpretation supporting much of that prosecution.
We will see whether jurors believe that Madigan viewed McClain as just another of several in the former speaker’s inner circle called upon for help and advice. Those who sat through the ComEd Four proceedings, which lasted seven weeks, surely know better.
McClain was Madigan’s chief deliverer of bad news, even to those in the legislature, such as Lou Lang, a longtime member of Madigan’s leadership team. It was McClain who instructed Lang to resign his House seat after allegations of sexual harassment emerged during the period in which two lieutenants in Madigan’s political organization were forced out of their jobs over similar issues. Assignments don’t get much more “sensitive” than that.
At Madigan’s repeated insistence, it was McClain who put the pressure on Anne Pramaggiore, longtime ComEd CEO and later senior executive at parent Exelon, to convince others in the company to name former Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority CEO Juan Ochoa to a lucrative ComEd board seat. The strong-arm tactics related to Ochoa have been a key part of both the ComEd Four and Madigan/McClain prosecutions. Pramaggiore was convicted along with McClain in the ComEd Four trial.
What stood out, too, in the many intercepted phone conversations between Madigan and McClain was simply how much Madigan wanted to spend time with his friend outside of work. Madigan frequently would ask McClain to have dinner with him, whether in Chicago or in Springfield, sometimes requiring McClain to go well out of his way to do so. Like much of Madigan’s discourse, the words didn’t explicitly demand anything, but the tone made clear that saying no wasn’t really an option.
McClain, of course, benefited too from his close friendship with Illinois’ most powerful politician. ComEd and others paid him handsomely for lobbying work; his ties to Madigan were the primary reason he was in demand.
But that didn’t stop us from feeling pity for McClain as “Himself” made their relationship out to be something akin to a pal on the bowling team. We surely weren’t alone in that courtroom wondering what McClain was thinking and feeling as he heard those words.
More broadly, we felt sorry, too, for the state of Illinois. Watching Madigan coldly reduce one of the most important relationships of his life in this way, it was easier to see how Illinois had come to this pivotal point in its history: drowning in pension liabilities, the result of numerous, seemingly small transactions and decisions over many years in which Madigan almost always had a hand.
And to what end? Always simply to hold onto power, to preserve status. McClain wasn’t the only one betrayed by Madigan. So were we all.
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