By Hannah Meisel
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
On a hot Tuesday in July 2017, then-Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan met with then-Chicago alderman Danny Solis at the speaker’s law offices in a high rise building at the heart of downtown Chicago.
The two were preparing for a larger meeting in which Solis, who chaired the City Council’s all-important Zoning Committee, would introduce a pair of real estate developers to Madigan and his longtime law partner to pitch the developers on hiring the speaker’s firm for property tax appeals work for its apartment project in Chicago’s booming West Loop neighborhood.
But little did Madigan know, he’d already fallen into the FBI’s trap.
Solis was secretly recording the meeting. And on Monday in a federal courtroom, a jury in the ex-speaker’s corruption trial saw a portion of the video that has for years been teased in legal filings as the feds’ sprawling criminal investigation unfolded around Madigan.
The former speaker, who left office under growing pressure related to the investigation in early 2021, faces 24 counts of racketeering, bribery, extortion and wire fraud. Prosecutors allege he used his political power and various offices – including as a partner in his law firm – as a “criminal enterprise” to protect and enhance his power while enriching himself and his allies.
In the grainy video, played by the Madigan’s defense team as part of opening statements in the long-awaited trial, the speaker’s hands are the first thing that come into view, punctuating his speech as they so often did when Madigan made his rare public appearances in Springfield. When Solis’ body-worn camera settled on the speaker’s face, Madigan was admonishing the alderman not to use the phrase “quid pro quo” as he had in a phone call discussing the project a few weeks earlier.
“You shouldn’t be talking like that,” Madigan said. “You’re just recommending our law firm because if they don’t get a good result on their real estate taxes, the whole project will be in trouble. Which is not good for your ward, so you want high quality representation.”
In her nearly two hours of opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker characterized the speaker’s admonishment as giving Solis a “false story” — even though both men knew the developer understood its project approvals from Solis and the Zoning Board were contingent on them hiring the speaker’s law firm.
“Solis had a huge amount of influence over these developers,” Streicker said of Solis’ position as zoning board chair. “Madigan understood this and exploited it to try to get business for his law firm.”
But Madigan’s lawyers sought to recast the exchange in a different light after playing the video in their opening statements. Defense attorney Tom Breen called Madigan a “soft, gentle person,” playing up his preference for quiet exercise of power instead of aggressive confrontation.
“He’s not even confrontational when Solis used the word ‘quid pro quo’ on the phone,” Breen said. “I guess the government thinks Madigan should’ve punched him out or something … No, Mike doesn’t talk that way, he doesn’t act that way.”
Throughout the hours of opening statements, Madigan sat at the head of his defense table in the wood-paneled courtroom wearing a scowl, taking occasional notes on a yellow legal pad. His expression only lightened briefly when Breen introduced him to the jury, walking behind the former speaker’s chair and patting him on the shoulders.
Madigan’s focus never broke during Streicker’s presentation to the jury, outlining alleged bribes he and his co-defendant Mike McClain, a longtime friend and Statehouse lobbyist, solicited from electric utility Commonwealth Edison and telecom giant AT&T in the form of jobs and contracts for his political allies. A jury last year already convicted McClain and three other former ComEd executives and lobbyists for the scheme, while a jury last month deadlocked in a similar, smaller trial of AT&T Illinois’ former president.
Often, the recipients of the jobs and contracts did little to no work for the companies, but Streicker said the companies understood they had to make the hires in order to grease the wheels for their desired legislation in Springfield. In describing this “stream of benefits,” Streicker used the phrase that her fellow prosecutors used in closing statements at last year’s ComEd trial: “Madigan wanted, ComEd gave and ComEd got,” Streicker said. “That’s what the evidence will show”
Expanding the lens beyond ComEd, Streicker said Madigan violated the public’s trust by using his political power to form a criminal enterprise and agreed “over and over and over again to corrupt public office for private gain.”
Breen, for his part, did not seek to refute Streicker’s presentation line by line, but rather insisted that by the end of the trial, the jury’s understanding of the evidence would compel them to acquit — and be “proud” to vote “not guilty.”
“These are tapes of other people talking,” Breen said of the more than 200 recordings expected to be played at trial. “People may have a motive. But they don’t have authority to speak for Michael Madigan. He doesn’t talk that way, he doesn’t act that way. He’s never made a demand on anyone. If someone is saying he made a demand on someone, that’s bull. Just bull.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.