By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO – It was a day of déjà vu at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse Tuesday as veteran Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain sat at a defense table listening to opening statements in his second corruption trial in 19 months and prosecutors called their first witnesses.
McClain, a longtime friend and close advisor of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, was already convicted last year for his role in bribing the powerful speaker with jobs and contracts for his allies at electric utility Commonwealth Edison. Now, the pair are on trial together, facing a set of charges expanded far beyond the ComEd scheme into allegations of racketeering.
But McClain’s lawyers, who are challenging his conviction, doubled down Tuesday on the same defense they led with last spring at the beginning of the “ComEd Four trial.”
Defense attorney John Mitchell claimed McClain did everything “with intent to maintain and increase his access to Mike Madigan,” explaining that building and maintaining relationships with elected officials lobbying is essential to lobbying. And for McClain, that relationship maintenance included “100% legal favors for Mike Madigan,” Mitchell said.
“Every time there’s a legal favor, the government’s view is that it must be a bribe,” Mitchell said. The argument mirrored opening statements made by his colleague at the outset of the ComEd trial last spring in which McClain attorney Patrick Cotter said the feds’ yearslong investigation gave them tunnel vision such that “everything begins to look like a crime.” in which McClain attorney Patrick Cotter said the feds’ yearslong investigation gave them tunnel vision such that “everything begins to look like a crime.”
“Members of the jury, the government turned over heaven and earth to find evidence of an exchange,” Mitchell said, mentioning the months the FBI had wiretapped his client’s phone, along with deals prosecutors made with cooperating witnesses set to testify later during the trial. “But when you hear all of the evidence, you are going to realize that they failed. It’s because there was no exchange. There was no agreement.”
McClain’s opening statements followed Madigan’s and the government’s presentations on Monday afternoon, in which the parties presented dramatically different views of the man who spent decades at the top of Illinois politics.
Prosecutors painted Madigan as a calculating career politician driven by power and money. But an attorney for the ex-speaker accused the feds of fundamentally misunderstanding Madigan, instead describing him as an “FDR New Deal Democrat” who was primarily interested in jobs – both for his constituents of the Illinois House district he represented for 50 years on Chicago’s Southwest Side and for Illinoisans statewide.
In previewing McClain’s legal defense in his opening statement, Mitchell also defended Madigan.
“There’s an old saying: If you walk around all day carrying a hammer, you’re eventually going to find something that looks like a nail,” Mitchell said. “The government wrongly concluded that since Mike Madigan is powerful, therefore he must be corrupt.”
The feds on Tuesday sought to play up the ex-speaker’s power for members of a jury who, during two weeks of questioning in jury selection, demonstrated they were largely unacquainted with Madigan other than some who had passing familiarity with his name.
To accomplish that, prosecutors called to the witness stand the same two former Democratic lawmakers who kicked off last spring’s ComEd trial: Carol Sente and Scott Drury.
Both retired representatives had conflict with Madigan during their years in office, stemming from their discomfort about the speaker’s control over the legislative process in Springfield and the political futures of Democrats in the Illinois House as chairman of the state’s Democratic Party.
Tuesday was the third time since last spring that Drury took the witness stand to answer a similar set of questions related to Madigan. Most recently, he was the first witness in last month’s trial of former AT&T president Paul La Schiazza, who was accused of bribing the former speaker with a lucrative contract for his political ally in exchange for favorable legislation in Springfield.
The jury in that case ended up deadlocking and the judge declared a mistrial. But Drury’s testimony was notable for his aggressive and pedantic answers to the defense attorney cross-examining him.
On Tuesday, Drury painted the same picture he had on the stand last month and in last year’s ComEd trial, telling prosecutors that as his relationship with Madigan deteriorated toward the end of his second term in office, so did his chances of getting legislation passed through the House. Drury, who served for six years after his first election to the House in 2012, declined to take money from the speaker’s political operation for his subsequent two campaigns.
He began splitting from Madigan and the rest of the House Democratic caucus in 2015 on a critical labor-related vote and by the end of 2016, Drury was contemplating running for speaker himself.
Ultimately, Drury didn’t end up challenging Madigan but did become the first House Democrat in a generation not to vote for Madigan’s continued speakership in early 2017.
Drury on Tuesday claimed that as his third term in office progressed, he was iced out of the legislative process. Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz how many bills he ended up passing after his “present” vote on Madigan’s bid for speaker, Drury said he didn’t “think any of them” moved forward.
But Madigan attorney Todd Pugh showed Drury legislative records to the contrary, which showed two bills he’d introduced in 2017 had, in fact, passed the House, though they died in the Senate. Additionally, two other bills that Drury sponsored after they’d passed the Senate ended up becoming law that year.
Answering a line of questioning almost identical to her testimony last spring, Sente said she felt pressured to vote according to the speaker’s recommendations for legislators in “target” districts like hers, meaning a seat that could be taken by a Republican given the right campaign.
The so-called “watch list,” which contained those recommendations, was meant to shield House Democrats from political fallout from taking votes on riskier bills. Though Sente acknowledged she was free to vote how she wanted, she said knew she’d have to face the wrath of one of Madigan’s top staffers, with whom she did not get along.
Sente also testified that a committee that had been created for her to chair – a position that included a $10,000 annual stipend – was disbanded without explanation in 2015 after she pushed for legislation that would have put term limits on legislative leaders, including the House speaker.
In her testimony last year, Sente was more specific in her claims that the committee disappeared as punishment for her term limits push and for voting against a Madigan-proposed bill that put an advisory question on the 2014 ballot asking voters whether they supported a “millionaires’ tax.”
Eventually, Sente’s committee was reconstituted and she was reinstated as its chair in late 2015. Attorneys for Madigan also displayed copies of two handwritten cards Sente had sent to the speaker in her final years in office, including a 2017 note sent after Sente announced she wouldn’t run for another term in the House, in which she complimented his “tactical abilities and patience.”
On Wednesday, prosecutors are expected to call another repeat witness: former state Rep. Lou Lang, who has testified in both the ComEd case and the trial of Madigan’s former chief of staff last summer. Both testimonies delved into how Madigan sent McClain to urge Lang to retire from the General Assembly after the speaker’s office was warned of a woman who had threatened to go public with sexual harassment allegations if Lang did not step down.
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.
