Danny Solis had been making secret recordings for the FBI for more than a year when he met with Michael McClain in 2017 and asked a question that would eventually go to the heart of one of the biggest federal corruption cases in Chicago history.
“What’s your relationship … with Mike, with the speaker?” Solis asked.
The “Mike” was Michael J. Madigan, Illinois’ famously cautious, reclusive and powerful House speaker now facing trial partly because of his ties to McClain, an ex-lawmaker who turned to lobbying. Madigan was already on his way to the top when McClain took office around 1972, McClain answered.
“The speaker was No. 1,” McClain told Solis, a longtime Chicago City Council member wearing a wire to avoid prison. “I was No. 2. And, um, we became real good friends. And then after I left office, then I went back to lobbying, and we continued that friendship.”
That friendship has now been examined repeatedly in federal courtrooms in Chicago and weighed by multiple juries. But it’s set to take center stage — and could be put to the test — as Madigan and McClain face trial together for an alleged racketeering conspiracy.
The 117-page indictment handed up against the pair alleges McClain served as an agent of the so-called “Madigan Enterprise.” It says he made unlawful demands on Madigan’s behalf and passed Madigan’s instructions on to others. Jurors in at least three trials have already heard about the widespread belief in Springfield that McClain acted as Madigan’s messenger.
Now Madigan and McClain are spending their days on trial together at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. They mostly kept their distance from each other during the first few days of jury selection last week, with a couple of exceptions. Madigan lifted his left hand in a subtle wave to McClain on Wednesday, hours into their first day in court. A few days later, when court adjourned on Friday, they shook hands.
Eight women and three men have so far been chosen to decide the two men’s fate. One more juror and six alternate jurors are still needed.
Old allies pitted against each other?
Defense attorneys have tried to portray McClain as a loud-mouthed braggart whose boasts couldn’t always be believed.
This summer, McClain’s attorneys also warned Madigan’s team will effectively throw McClain under the bus at trial, acting as a team of “second prosecutors” and potentially leaving jurors to choose between the two of them. McClain asked to be tried separately, but a judge refused.
On the surface, that appeared to signal a breakdown in their famous friendship. But prosecutors later suggested it was a strategic move, and Madigan wanted severance “just as badly as McClain” so the men could each blame the other at separate trials.
The reality will become clearer as the trial truly gets underway, as defense strategies are revealed, and as Madigan and McClain endure a two-month slog in a small courtroom where they’ll continue to be seated only feet from each other.
Retired FBI Special Agent Brendan O’Leary testified last year about the significance of Madigan’s close friendships. O’Leary explained to a jury that, after spending most of his two-decade FBI career investigating Chicago corruption, he found Madigan to be “different from any other politician I’ve seen.”
“No cellphone, no emails, no texts,” O’Leary testified. “He relied on his tight inner circle.”
O’Leary made that comment in the trial of longtime Madigan aide Tim Mapes, who is now in prison for perjury and attempted obstruction of justice. Jurors in that case heard no one in Springfield was as close to Madigan as Mapes and McClain.
‘At the bridge with my musket’
McClain, 77, from Quincy, spent 10 years in the Illinois House of Representatives. He then spent decades as a lobbyist, including for ComEd. A separate jury last year found him guilty of a plot to bribe Madigan, 82, in a scheme designed to benefit the utility.
Both panels heard testimony from witnesses such as state Rep. Robert “Bob” Rita and former Madigan aide Will Cousineau, two likely witnesses in Madigan’s trial.
Cousineau told the Mapes jury McClain had “significant access to the speaker” and a “different sort of relationship” with Madigan. Rita said he’d often see McClain sitting on a bench outside Madigan’s suite of offices on the third floor of the Illinois State Capitol.
Rita also said he spotted McClain regularly working in a conference room in Madigan’s suite, even though McClain wasn’t employed by the Legislature.
“Could just anyone go into that conference room?” a prosecutor asked.
“The conference room?” Rita said. “No. I — no, not the conference room.”
During Cousineau’s testimony in McClain’s trial last year, prosecutors reviewed a secretly recorded call in which McClain spoke to Cousineau about lobbying. McClain called it the “dark side,” and he said it’s easier to endure “as long as we always remember who our real client is.”
“Whom did you understand Mr. McClain to be referencing with ‘real client?’” a prosecutor asked Cousineau on the witness stand.
“The speaker,” Cousineau answered.
That conversation between Cousineau and McClain occurred more than a year after McClain announced his retirement from lobbying in 2016. When he did, prosecutors have pointed out, he sent a letter to Madigan laying out his future intentions.
“I am willing … to do ‘assignments,’” McClain wrote to Madigan. “Michael, you will have to decide if you want me to do it, legally and ethically. I offer it. I am willing to be part of strategic and tactical discussions also.
“At the end of the day I am at the bridge with my musket standing with and for the Madigan family,” McClain assured the speaker.
“I will never leave your side.”