A federal jury has found former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan guilty of bribery conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud in a partial verdict announced Wednesday morning.
The news came nearly 65 hours into jurors’ deliberations in the case against Madigan, who broke records as the longest-serving state House leader in the nation before a widening federal corruption probe forced him from office in 2021.
The panel of eight women and four men listened to more than 60 witnesses and a full week of closing arguments before they began deliberating on the afternoon of Jan. 29. On Wednesday morning, Jurors told the judge in a note they had reached a unanimous decision on 17 counts, but were unlikely to be able to agree on another 12.
“We have come to a unanimous decision on 17 counts,” the jurors told U.S. District Judge John Blakey. “We have tried our very best to come to a unanimous decision on the remaining 12 counts and have not been able to do so. It is our belief that this impasse will not be overcome.”
Madigan’s attorney Dan Collins suggested accepting the verdict on the 17 and moving for mistrial on the 12 other counts. Michael McClain’s attorney Patrick Cotter had a similar response.
Prosecutors said they were “amenable to taking a partial verdict.” Assistant U.S. Atty. Amarjeet Bhachu told the judge “the choice is totally” the jurors’ as to whether to return a partial verdict.
Madigan and McClain, his longtime associate, were charged in a 117-page racketeering conspiracy indictment. Madigan faced 23 counts, and McClain faced six, for a total of 29.
Madigan was found guilty on 10 counts related to Commonwealth Edison and for efforts to secure a state board seat for former Ald. Danny Solis. He was found not guilty — or there was no verdict — on a racketeering conspiracy count related to an apartment project, a parking lot Chinatown and AT&T legislatition.
There was no verdict reached against any count against McClain.
The news came nearly 65 hours into the jurors’ deliberations. The panel of eight women and four men listened to more than 60 witnesses and a full week of closing arguments before they began deliberating on the afternoon of Jan. 29. The trial has spanned four months in all, including 11 weeks of testimony.
As he dismissed the jurors, Judge John Blakey quoted Shdakespeare: “I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.”
Prosecutors told the jury in closing arguments that Madigan and his longtime ally, Michael McClain, sought “power and profit.” Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors only saw the “myth” of Madigan, and that their case was “incomplete,” “misleading” and “false.”
The feds summoned 50 witnesses to a 12th-floor courtroom in their bid to prove Madigan and McClain guilty of “corruption at the highest levels of state government.” Defense attorneys called 13 witnesses of their own to show the feds overreached.
The decade-long FBI investigation that led to Madigan’s trial roiled local politics and changed the course of Illinois history. The news that Madigan had secretly been recorded by the feds inside his private law office first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in January 2019.
But Madigan maintained his grip on the speaker’s gavel until January 2021, two months after McClain and three others with ties to ComEd were charged with a lengthy conspiracy to bribe him. After that, Madigan couldn’t muster the votes in Springfield to remain as speaker.
Still, it took until March 2022 for a grand jury to hand up an indictment against Madigan and McClain, accusing them of a racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors argued that Madigan led a criminal enterprise over nearly a decade, with McClain acting as his agent. The enterprise was allegedly designed to enhance Madigan’s political power and reward his associates.
Prosecutors alleged five schemes taking place between 2011 and 2019. In two of them, they said 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.
Five Madigan allies were paid $1.3 million by ComEd over eight years, records show. 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 involved 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 Michael 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 paid seat on a 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.
During his own turn on the witness stand, Solis also had to answer for many of the allegations that prompted him to wear a wire against his colleagues. Prosecutors have described him as one of Chicago’s “most significant cooperators in the last several decades,” and they told jurors he amounted to a “walking microphone” when dealing with Madigan and McClain.
But Solis only agreed to work with the FBI after agents accused him in a lengthy affidavit of receiving “a steady flow of personal benefits” from people for whom Solis had either offered or taken official action.
The benefits allegedly included campaign contributions, prostitution services and Viagra.
Solis testified about an incident in which a businessman wound up putting a suitcase on a hotel bed in China, filled with what Solis described as $10,000 “in Chinese money.” He said a woman he’d had an affair with took the money and used it to furnish an apartment here.
Much of his testimony also involved his sister, former Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle. Solis said she once told him the developer of the Nobu Hotel project offered her $100,000 to help expedite approvals. “She said she could split it with me,” Solis said.
An FBI special agent testified during the trial that investigators wound up wiretapping Solis Doyle’s phone, though he said it was not fruitful. Solis Doyle was never charged with any wrongdoing.
However, Michael Madigan’s defense attorneys grilled Solis about $617,000 they said Solis collected from his sister between 2014 and 2018. They also questioned whether he had properly reported his income to the Internal Revenue Service, even when he was working with the FBI.
Prosecutors told the judge the defense team had “mistakenly” accused Solis of a crime.