Prosecutors kicked off closing arguments Wednesday in the trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, the final opportunity for attorneys to make their case to jurors who will soon begin considering the historic case against the Southwest Side Democrat.
“Power and profit,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz told jurors during her opening salvo. “Michael Madigan and Michael McClain conspired to enhance and preserve Madigan’s power and line Madigan’s pockets.
“Ladies and gentlemen, legislation should not be bought. But that’s what was happening here,” Schwartz said. “And Madigan knew that, because he and McClain set it up that way.”
U.S. District Judge John Blakey promised not to put any time limits on the arguments. The lawyers have predicted they’ll last three days, but the trial’s timeline has been difficult to predict since it began in early October.
Jurors will hear first from prosecutors, then from attorneys for Madigan, and then from the team representing his co-defendant, Michael McClain. But prosecutors carry the burden of proof, so they will also make a rebuttal argument, giving them the last word.
The closing arguments follow 11 weeks of testimony, in which jurors heard from more than 60 witnesses. Most notable among them was Madigan himself. He testified for nearly 12 hours over four days earlier this month. McClain opted not to testify.
When the arguments conclude, Blakey will give jurors his final instructions before they begin to deliberate — a process that could take days. Jurors in the related 2023 trial of four people with ties to ComEd, including McClain, deliberated for 27 hours over five days before convicting the four defendants.
The separate panel that heard the case against ex-Ald. Edward M. Burke deliberated for nearly 23 hours over four days before convicting him in December 2023.
All three trials were the result of an aggressive FBI investigation that began 11 years ago and led to charges against roughly 20 people. Burke and eight others have been sentenced to prison.
Madigan and McClain are accused of a racketeering conspiracy, outlined in a sweeping 117-page indictment alleging five separate schemes. At its core, the indictment accuses Madigan of leading the criminal “Madigan Enterprise,” designed to enhance his political power and reward his allies and associates. McClain is accused of acting as his agent.
The indictment alleges schemes taking place between 2011 and 2019. In two of them, it says Madigan conspired to accept bribes from ComEd and AT&T Illinois in the form of jobs, contracts and money for his allies while legislation crucial to the utilities moved through Springfield.
Prosecutors say five Madigan allies were paid $1.3 million by ComEd over eight years. The money was paid through intermediaries, and the recipients allegedly did little or no work for ComEd. They were former Alds. Frank Olivo and Michael R. Zalewski, former Cook County Recorder of Deeds Edward Moody, longtime Madigan campaign worker Raymond Nice and ex-state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo.
Of the five, only Acevedo has faced criminal charges, for cheating on his taxes. AT&T Illinois also paid another $22,500 to Acevedo through an intermediary.
The other three alleged schemes involve ex-Ald. Danny Solis. By 2017, he had represented Chicago’s 25th Ward on the City Council for more than two decades and had risen to become the powerful head of its Zoning Committee. However, the FBI confronted him with evidence of his own alleged wrongdoing in June 2016, and he agreed to wear a secret wire.
The Chicago Sun-Times unmasked Solis in January 2019.
Prosecutors say Madigan took advantage of Solis’ position to steer private business to his law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, in schemes that involved an apartment project at Sangamon Street and Washington Boulevard, a Chinatown parking lot at Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue, and the Old Post Office that sits over the Eisenhower Expressway.
The alleged enterprise appears to have benefitted multiple people who are not accused of wrongdoing. Prominent among them are onetime Madigan aide Kevin Quinn and Madigan’s son, Andrew Madigan.
Kevin Quinn, the brother of Ald. Marty Quinn, lost his job early in 2018 after being accused of sexual harassment by political consultant Alaina Hampton. Jurors heard a secret FBI recording of McClain telling a former Madigan staffer he hoped to find people to pay Kevin Quinn “a grand each … for six months.”
Separately, prosecutors tied $43,000 that Andrew Madigan made through his job at Alliant Insurance between 2019 and 2021 to an August 2018 conversation between Michael Madigan and Solis. Michael Madigan asked Solis to help his son after Solis asked for the Speaker’s help securing a seat on a paid government board — a request that was part of an FBI ruse.
However, Michael Madigan’s legal team answered the prosecutors’ allegations by calling their client and 11 others to the witness stand over seven days. It amounted to the longest case by an individual defendant in any of the major corruption trials to recently play out in Chicago.
In doing so, the defense tried to offer counter-narratives to jurors, undermine the feds’ evidence and present poised-and-polished associates of Michael Madigan’s — the antithesis of who jurors might expect to be involved in a years-long crime spree.
Among them was Illinois Appellate Justice David Ellis, a successful novelist.
Perhaps most notably, Michael Madigan’s defense team sought to distance the politician from McClain, who has been described to multiple juries as the Speaker’s emissary in Springfield.
When a prosecutor tried to pin Michael Madigan down on whether he “trusted McClain with sensitive matters,” Michael Madigan said he only did so “sometimes.” He explained, “I would have differences of opinion with [McClain]. … I didn’t always accept his advice. I would listen, but I would take it with other pieces of advice.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu pointed to colorful notes and letters McClain would send to Michael Madigan expressing his high regard for his longtime friend, and Bhachu asked if Michael Madigan would “reciprocate.”
“Not that I recall,” Michael Madigan said.
The prosecutor asked, “were you very loyal to Mr. McClain?”
“I don’t think I was as loyal to [McClain] as he was to me,” Michael Madigan said.
However, Michael Madigan struggled under Bhachu’s questioning to explain his ongoing contact with Solis, particularly after Solis dropped the words “quid pro quo” into a conversation in 2017, tying approvals at City Hall to potential business for Michael Madigan’s law firm.
The former Speaker told the jury “we all have regrets in life.”
“One of my regrets is that I had any time spent with Danny Solis,” he said.