Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked for nearly six years in prison for former ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain, whose unique position as a confidant to then-House Speaker Michael Madigan was at the center of what they say was a “stunning” scheme to to win the speaker’s assistance with the utility’s legislation in Springfield.
“McClain’s plan was illegal to its core,” prosecutors wrote in their 48-page sentencing filing. “In securing benefits for both Madigan and ComEd, McClain corrupted the legislative process and the internal control processes of a large, regulated utility…McClain’s repeated overstepping of legal lines in this case is stunning.”
The 70-month prison term requested by prosecutors is the same amount they asked for former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who was convicted along with two others of conspiring with McClain to influence the speaker.
McClain’s attorneys, meanwhile, asked for probation, stating in a filing of their own on Thursday that McClain merely passed along “a handful of job recommendations” from Madigan because of his powerful position as speaker and the fact that they were close friends.
“Doing so was legal and constitutionally protected lobbying,” defense attorneys Patrick Cotter and David Niemeier wrote. “The government’s failure to make the critical distinction between a favor done with intent to lawfully curry favor with a public official, as opposed to the trading of gifts for actions done by that official, was at the heart of this case.”
McClain’s lawyers also argued the 77-year-old has serious health concerns and there’s a strong likelihood, “if incarcerated, he will suffer seriously and unnecessarily from his deteriorating health situation or even die alone in prison, separated from his family and loved ones.”
The defense also submitted a four-page letter that McClain wrote to the judge, detailing his life, family, and professional relationships. The letter never once mentioned Madigan, though McClain’s lawyers wrote in their filing that it was the speaker who was the “initiator of the sequence of events that underlies the actions that led to his conviction.”
“The evidence at trial, as well as the theory put forth by the government, was clear and undeniable that it was Mr. Madigan who approached Mr. McClain and made numerous job recommendations over the years, thus setting in motion the events that led to the convictions now before the court,” the defense wrote. “There was no evidence whatsoever that Mr. McClain ever initiated any job recommendations. The source and first cause was always, and only, Mr. Madigan.”
McClain is set to be sentenced on July 24.
Prosecutors have also asked for 56 months behind bars for John Hooker, a top internal lobbyist at ComEd who was instrumental in devising the plan to funnel the payments to ghost “subcontractors.”
Sentencing filings for the fourth defendant, lobbyist Jay Doherty, are due next week.
Madigan, meanwhile, was convicted in a separate trial of an array of schemes that included the ComEd bribery payments and was sentenced last month to 7 1/2 years in prison. That same jury could not reach a verdict in any of the counts against McClain.
As a longtime lobbyist for Commonwealth Edison who doubled as Madigan’s closest confidant, McClain, of downstate Quincy, for years held the ultimate political catbird seat, where he was able to leverage his unique knowledge of the speaker’s thinking to induce the utility giant’s executives to lavish money on Madigan’s cronies and scramble to meet his myriad other demands.
At the center of the scheme was a plan to funnel a total of $1.3 million in do-nothing contracts to Madigan’s 13th Ward cronies.
In addition, prosecutors alleged ComEd also hired a clouted law firm run by political operative Victor Reyes, distributed numerous college internships within Madigan’s 13th Ward fiefdom, and backed former McPier chief Juan Ochoa, the friend of a Madigan ally, for an $80,000-a-year seat on the utility’s board of directors, the indictment alleged.
In return, prosecutors alleged, Madigan used his influence over the General Assembly to help ComEd score a series of huge legislative victories that not only rescued the company from financial instability but led to record-breaking, billion-dollar profits.
Among them was the 2011 smart grid bill that set a built-in formula for the rates ComEd could charge customers, avoiding battles with the Illinois Commerce Commission, according to the charges. ComEd also leaned on Madigan’s office to help pass the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016, which kept the formula rate in place and also rescued two nuclear plants run by an affiliated company, Exelon Generation.
McClain, and his co-defendants, who collectively became known as the “ComEd Four,” were convicted on all counts after a two-month trial. Shah later tossed some of those counts due to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year, but he left the main count of bribery conspiracy intact and denied defense requests to delay the sentencing hearings any further.
At trial in 2023, defense attorneys argued over and over that the government is seeking to criminalize legal lobbying and job recommendations that are at the center of the state’s legitimate political system.
They ripped the government’s star witness, former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez, as a liar and opportunist who was so terrified when FBI agents confronted him in January 2019 that he flipped without even consulting a lawyer and agreed to secretly record his friends.
Marquez testified in March 2023 that the roster of “subcontractors” hired by ComEd was curated by McClain and read like a who’s who of Madigan’s vaunted political operation, including two legendary precinct captains, a former assistant majority leader in the House and two former Chicago aldermen at the center of Madigan’s Southwest Side base of power.
Over the course of eight years, ComEd paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars, even though they had no particular expertise and ultimately did virtually no work for the utility. Some seemed to be downright incompetent, Marquez told the jury.
On cross-examination, Marquez, who pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing, acknowledged that there was “no guarantee” that Madigan was going to help pass ComEd bills, but added that the company still tried to make him happy because “not doing it would cause us to be negatively looked on by” the speaker.
He also admitted that he initially told the FBI he didn’t believe any of it was bribery.
“I know that they were brought on as a favor to Michael Madigan,” Marquez testified on direct examination. “For Madigan to see ComEd positively. So that he could perhaps be helpful for our legislative agenda in Springfield.”
In their filing Thursday, McClain’s attorneys wrote that Marquez’s testimony, along with other evidence at trial, “showed that Mr. McClain never intended nor believed, or had any reason to believe, that he was doing anything illegal; much less, that he did so with a ‘corrupt’ intent.”
“Marquez’s persistent statements to the government, for many months after he commenced cooperating with them, that he did not believe he had done anything illegal regarding the job recommendations, are, we submit, powerful evidence of his; and the other defendants’ true, non-corrupt state of mind at the time of the events charged in the indictment,” the defense wrote.
But prosecutors argued the “politically savvy” McClain, who served for 10 years as a state legislator along with Madigan and operated for decades in and around Springfield as a lobbyist and consultant, knew exactly what he was doing.
“McClain did not blink when he made demands to ComEd on Madigan’s behalf,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sarah Streicker, Julia Schwartz, and Diane MacArthur. “ComEd got what it needed and wanted in Springfield.”
Prosecutors also emphasized McClain’s closeness to Madigan, whom he referred to on one recorded call as his “real client” and referred to language such as “our Friend” and “Himself.”
To McClain, the bond between himself and Madigan was unbreakable,” prosecutors wrote. “Madigan was McClain’s lodestar and his first priority—the person McClain put above lobbying clients and, when it came to committing illegal acts, above the law as well.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com