Lobbyist Michael McClain wrote with characteristic flair and bluster when he penned a retirement letter in 2016 to a fellow aide to then-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, assuring 13th Ward worker Kevin Quinn that “I am not dying.”
In a handwritten addendum, McClain offered his help. But he also insisted that Quinn “stay in the fox hole with the speaker!”
It’s a phrase McClain was fond of throwing around — and one that jurors in Madigan’s racketeering conspiracy trial heard more than once Monday. They also heard what happened when Quinn lost his own job a little more than a year later over allegations of sexual harassment in 2018.
McClain dialed up various lobbyists close to Madigan, whose power base was in the 13th Ward, convincing them to kick in cash to help Quinn get by. Then, McClain asked Madigan if he wanted to have a chat about it with Quinn’s brother, 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn.
“I think I oughta stay out of it,” Madigan, a Southwest Side Democrat, said.
Marty Quinn had a similar response when he got his own phone call from McClain about the plan to help his brother.
“I’d rather stay in the dark,” Marty Quinn told McClain.
Neither one protested or told McClain to shut the plan down.
Prosecutors say that episode — and the tale of the Madigan allies in the “fox hole” together — is evidence of a criminal enterprise Madigan led for nearly a decade, with McClain acting as his agent.
But Madigan’s comment on the recording heard Monday has also proven to be one of the more contentious points of Madigan’s racketeering conspiracy trial.
Madigan’s defense attorneys have suggested that the comment has been misinterpreted by the feds. Neither Madigan nor McClain are accused of sexual harassment, but the allegations against Kevin Quinn came at the height of the #MeToo movement.
They threatened Madigan’s grip on power — similar to powerful men across the country — and jurors even heard a recording Monday of Madigan and McClain talking about hiring a crisis management firm.
They discussed Anita Dunn, later an adviser to President Joe Biden. McClain told Madigan he loved “the optics of it. … You know that she’s part of the #MeToo movement, part of, I would say, progressives.”
Dunn was eventually hired. But it turned out that Dunn also had a role in assisting Alaina Hampton, the political consultant who had accused Kevin Quinn of sexual harassment, as previously reported by NPR.
Madigan resigned from the Legislature in 2021 as the feds’ investigation of him swelled. He and McClain were then indicted in 2022.
After playing those recordings Monday, prosecutors moved on to other key areas of their case. Jurors heard from ComEd executive Keisha Parker, former 13th Ward precinct captain Joe Lullo, and retired political science professor Dick Simpson, who explained the machinery of ward politics to the jury.
Simpson was not allowed to testify during last year’s separate ComEd bribery trial, in which McClain and three other ComEd executives and lobbyists were convicted of a scheme to bribe Madigan.
U.S. District Judge John Blakey decided to let Simpson testify on a limited basis in the current trial of Madigan and McClain.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Paris Prempeh testified about a search conducted of Kevin Quinn’s home on May 14, 2019. That’s when jurors got a look at the letter McClain wrote him in December 2016.
In the body of the letter, McClain quotes from what he says is his “favorite book”: “Markings” by Dag Hammarskjold.
“When I think of those who will come after — or survive me — I feel as if I were taking part in the preparation for a feast, the joys of which I shall not share,” McClain wrote.
In handwriting below, McClain told Kevin Quinn that “I am not dying.” He offered his assistance, and he told Quinn to stay in the “fox hole.”
In the secretly recorded Aug 29, 2018, conversation between Madigan and McClain about the plan to help Kevin Quinn, McClain explained how he’d found “four or five people” to send him money “for the next six months.”
McClain asked Madigan if he wanted to speak to Marty Quinn about it.
“I think I oughta stay out of it,” Madigan replied. “That’s my thinking.”
Minutes later, McClain placed a separate call to Marty Quinn.
“Marty, do you want to know anything that I’m going to propose to Kevin, or would you like to stay in the dark on that?” McClain asked.
“I’d rather stay in the dark,” Marty Quinn eventually replied.
Jurors also heard McClain’s call with Kevin Quinn on Aug. 30, 2018, telling him about his plan to funnel him $5,000 to $6,000 a month so he’d have “a bridge” while he looked for a new job.
McClain told Kevin Quinn he’d only need to produce a single report for all of the contributors, which they’d be able to pull out of a drawer if the IRS asked questions.
“What do you think?” McClain asked
Quinn, sounding relieved, told McClain that his plan “sounds great.”