Mike Madigan knew for a very long time that the U.S. Attorney’s
office and the FBI badly wanted to put his head on a spike.
It was no secret. Everybody knew it. Madigan was investigated over
and over again, but nothing ever came of it.
“This was a guy they wanted to go after, and they gathered as much
as they could against him and something stuck,” the Madigan/McClain jury
foreman told the Chicago Tribune.
After the now-pardoned Rod Blagojevich was arrested by the feds in
a pre-dawn raid on unseemly corruption charges and was impeached by Madigan’s
House, then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn appointed a blue-ribbon committee to recommend
ethics changes, chaired by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins,
who’d helped put George Ryan in prison.
Madigan had been convinced that Blagojevich was a crook for
several years. The House Speaker, for instance, would never agree to a major
capital plan because he believed the governor and his pals would try to put
their grubby paws on every dollar.
But instead of focusing mainly on the executive branch – which had
seen the indictments of two governors in a row by that time – the former
prosecutor Collins’ commission focused quite significant attention on the
General Assembly, and on Madigan in particular.
Most folks just figured that Madigan had avoided the long arm of
federal law by being extra careful. And he may have been. But the arrogance of
immense power apparently overrode his sense of self-preservation.
He paid a big price last week – two days after Blagojevich
received a full pardon from President Donald Trump. Try to put that in a movie
and they’d tell you it just wasn’t believable.
The jury believed the prosecution’s (persuasive) arguments that
Madigan knew of the move to put the Speaker’s cronies into do-nothing
ComEd-related jobs (four counts). Madigan’s insanely unwise decision to
associate himself with the widely known scumbag Danny Solis got him guilty
verdicts on six more counts.
Madigan was convicted on 10 of 23 charges. It’s possible that
Madigan, 82, could spend the rest of his life in prison, while Blagojevich may
end up serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia.
A few more points:
• The federal government’s much-ballyhooed RICO
charge against Mike Madigan and Mike McClain was rejected by jurors 11-1, the
jury foreman told some Chicago news media outlets. The foreman told the Tribune
that it was part of a “government overreach” against Madigan. The feds
almost never lose racketeering cases, but most jurors apparently bought the
defense argument that the U.S. Attorney was prosecuting the Mike Madigan “myth”
instead of Mike Madigan the man.
• I really thought the G had Madigan cold on the
Chinatown thing. They had Madigan on tape numerous times talking with Solis and
his consigliere Mike McClain about a land-transfer bill to help a favored
developer buy a Chinatown parking lot and build a hotel and how that would
result in a new law firm client.
But 10 out of 12 jurors apparently bought the argument that
Madigan’s longtime property tax law partner Bud Getzendanner had the final say
over who would become a client, and that he would never approve a new client
with state land transfer issues before the House.
• Two federal trials have now directly addressed
the AT&T charges. Both trials have resulted in hung juries on this topic.
Back in October of 2022, AT&T paid $23 million and entered
into a deferred prosecution agreement “to resolve a federal criminal
investigation into alleged misconduct involving the company’s efforts to
unlawfully influence (Madigan),” the Justice Department declared at the time.
The feds put former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza
on trial, but the jury was unable to convict.
Madigan and McClain were also charged with participating in a
bribery scheme in which La Schiazza hired former Rep. Eddie Acevedo, D-Chicago,
for a no-show job to help the company pass a bill to exempt the company from
having to provide universal landline service. The jury hung 10-2 in favor of
acquittal.
The AT&T provision was included in an omnibus bill that had
been painstakingly devised over a period of years, had bipartisan support and
backing from organized labor, and, most importantly, was part of a 2017 effort
to test whether Republicans would help break the notorious Bruce Rauner budget
impasse, because the bill also included a 911 call center service fee
increases. The bill passed, Rauner’s veto was overridden, and a budget was
approved shortly thereafter.
On this point, the feds truly did go after the myth and not the
facts.
This article appears in The Wedding Issue 2025.
