Michael McClain, a longtime confidant of ex-speaker Michael Madigan, was a smart and diligent lobbyist who never agreed to or knew about any bribery scheme, his attorney told jurors Tuesday in closing arguments in Madigan and McClain’s landmark public corruption trial.
“What the evidence of this trial did show is lobbying and politics. Lobbying and politics,” McClain attorney Patrick Cotter said in his closing remarks, adding: “Lobbying and politics is not a crime.”
McClain, an experienced lobbyist who was close to Madigan for decades, is charged in six out of the 23 counts in a corruption indictment that alleges he and Madigan schemed to reinforce Madigan’s power and line his pockets by running his operations like a criminal enterprise.
In arguments that frequently ridiculed the government’s case as weak and illogical, Cotter emphasized that there is a hard line between lobbying and bribery. Bribery requires a clear intent and agreement to exchange something for official action, Cotter said.
“A bribe involves an exchange, a ‘this for that.’ Lobbying does not. Lobbying does not. Lobbying is about hope. It’s a profession about hope, no guarantees, no exchanges,” Cotter said. “Building trust and credibility … is not a bribe.”
McClain, a longtime ComEd lobbyist, is accused of participating in a scheme in which the utility giant would give jobs to Madigan allies in exchange for Madigan’s support of the utility’s legislative agenda. McClain would repeatedly refer people for ComEd jobs at Madigan’s behest.
McClain and three others were convicted on related charges in 2023’s “ComEd Four” trial, though the legal landscape has changed significantly since he was found guilty, and his attorneys are hoping to have that conviction thrown out.
The U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted a federal bribery statute last year, meaning in order to find Madigan and McClain guilty, jurors must find that they agreed to participate in an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement.
And McClain’s actions did not meet that standard, Cotter told jurors, saying what McClain did was normal relationship-building and favor-trading. ComEd didn’t even give jobs to everyone Madigan and McClain referred, he noted — not even Madigan’s son-in-law got hired, Cotter said.
And Cotter spent significant time Tuesday attacking the credibility of Fidel Marquez, a former ComEd executive who cut a deal with prosecutors in order to avoid serious prison time.
During his cooperation, Marquez made a series of undercover videos of and recorded phone calls where the plan to pay the subcontractors was discussed, including one where McClain tells Marquez to not put “anything in writing.”
But Cotter noted the speed with which Marquez flipped on his colleagues after the FBI confronted him at his mother’s home early one morning in January 2019. Marquez went “from sleeping in his bed to being a government cooperator in a couple hours,” Cotter said.
“Wow. That’s amazing,” he said. “And that’s all before breakfast.”
And even on the stand and subject to his cooperation agreement, Marquez never specifically testified that ComEd sought to exchange jobs for Madigan’s support of utility legislation, Cotter said. Marquez repeatedly said that ComEd acted so Madigan would look favorably upon their agenda, but that does not amount to an agreement or exchange, Cotter argued.
“He never said that ‘the conspiracy I was in with Mike McClain was to trade jobs for official action,” he said.
“What kind of conspiracy is that, when the co-conspirators never talk about the point of the conspiracy?” Cotter asked jurors, sarcastically suggesting it could have been “some kind of mental telepathy conspiracy.”
Cotter opened his remarks Tuesday by telling jurors they are “the thin but incredibly strong line that protects citizens of this country, the individual citizen, from the power and the might of the federal government. …The only thing between that power and the single human being, Mike McClain, is you.”
“You are the ones who have to make the decision whether in this case the government has made a mistake,” Cotter continued. “Have they gone too far, have they tried to stretch the law that is meant to apply to real bribes … and tried to extend it into activities that are not this-for-that exchanges – lobbying, politics, friendship.”
In addition to alleging bribery schemes involving ComEd and AT&T Illinois, the indictment in the case accuses Madigan of pressuring real estate developers into hiring Madigan’s private law firm to do tax appeal work and offering to help Solis get a lucrative state board position in exchange for bringing developers to him.
The trial, which began Oct. 8, represents the pinnacle of a lengthy federal corruption investigation that has already resulted in convictions of several other Madigan-adjacent figures over the past few years. Madigan, however, is inarguably the biggest target.
The case has centered on more than 150 wiretapped conversations and secretly video-recorded meetings that gave jurors a behind-the-scenes look at evidence behind some of the marquee allegations in the indictment.
In their closing argument last week, prosecutors said the case came down to “power and profit” for Madigan, “the man calling the shots” who ruled the House with an iron fist for decades.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
rlong@chicagotribune.com
