‘ComEd Four’ trial offering a fascinating and unprecedented look into the inner workings of Michael Madigan’s political power

It was never any secret that Michael Madigan was the most powerful politician in the state during his record run as Illinois House speaker and captain of the state Democratic Party.

But the testimony that has unfolded in a Chicago federal courtroom over the past two weeks has offered a fascinating — and unprecedented — look into the closely guarded inner workings of Madigan’s political might.

Through wiretapped conversations, internal documents and the sworn accounts of key insiders, prosecutors in the “ComEd Four” bribery trial have laid bare the political machine as it existed during Madigan’s decadeslong run at the apex of the political food chain.

Before stepping down in 2021 as the investigation closed in, Madigan, now 80, held sway over not only the fate of legislation in the General Assembly, but also the political and professional futures of hordes of lawmakers, lobbyists, job-seekers and, of course, a nearly fanatical crew of campaign workers driven by stateside acolytes and his 13th Ward political army.

Jurors have so far heard an FBI wiretap of Madigan’s private “Sunday morning meeting” with his inner circle of advisers, and listened to other calls where the famously reclusive speaker — so cautious that he preferred to borrow cellphones rather than use one of his own — hashed out strategy, plotted the ouster of a key ally and complained of the follies of political friends and foes alike.

“I understand we have a lot of people walking around trying to find things to complain about, but every once in a while the speaker gets to do what he wants to do,” Madigan told his inner circle in one secretly recorded call from December 2018, which was played in court last week.

Madigan’s tongue-in-cheek comment, said with his typical dry wit, might be the biggest understatement in a trial where witness after witness has testified that during the height of Madigan’s reign in the House, his political power was unmatched, with a leadership style described by one longtime ally as “fear and intimidation.”

Proving up Madigan’s influence to the jury is a key element of the prosecution’s case against four associates of the speaker accused of conspiring to bribe the powerful speaker to help ComEd’s legislative agenda.

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, have been quick to point out through cross-examination that despite being a dominant political force, Madigan was no king who could simply get complex legislation passed with a snap of his fingers.

The defense has argued that what prosecutors say was bribery was actually nothing more than honest, legal political lobbying, and that there was no evidence Madigan did anything to directly help ComEd in exchange for benefits that flowed to his cronies.

“Politicians, and I don’t want to shock anybody, politicians act in their own best interest a lot,” Patrick Cotter, who represents defendant Michael McClain, told the jury in his opening statement earlier this month. “Mike Madigan acted in his own best interest all the time.”

Cotter said Madigan’s staff negotiated every significant, complicated bill that ever came before the General Assembly, not just ComEd-related legislation. They did it, he said, because “that’s their job.”

Charged in the case are McClain, a retired ComEd lobbyist and one of Madigan’s closest confidants; former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore; John Hooker, a longtime ComEd lobbyist; and Jay Doherty, who was a consultant and lobbyist for ComEd and the ex-president of the City Club of Chicago.

The indictment alleged ComEd poured $1.3 million into payments funneled to ghost “subcontractors” who were Madigan’s associates, put a Madigan-backed candidate on the ComEd board, and gave coveted internships to families in his 13th Ward, all part of an elaborate scheme to keep the speaker happy and help the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.

Prosecutors also alleged that ComEd agreed to hire and then renew a contract for the Reyes Kurson law firm, headed by longtime Madigan associate Victor Reyes, to curry favor with the speaker.

Madigan and McClain, meanwhile, are facing separate racketeering charges alleging an array of corrupt schemes, including the bribery plot by ComEd.

The most significant testimony of the government’s case came Thursday from Will Cousineau, one of Madigan’s top political operatives, who for years had a front-row seat in the speaker’s legislative and campaign operations.

In what can only spell bad news for Madigan, whose own trial is set for April 2024, Cousineau revealed on the witness stand that he was granted immunity from the U.S. attorney’s office, shielding him from prosecution as long as he testifies truthfully when the government calls on him.

For years, Cousineau, 45, was a constant presence on the Illinois House floor, where he would strut freely from desk to desk of elected officials and speak bluntly with the authority granted to him by Madigan.

But Cousineau cut a far different profile in court last week, where he appeared uncomfortable on the witness stand and spoke so softly that prosecutors repeatedly told him to speak up.

Cousineau’s testimony offered the jury both a broad look at Madigan’s overall operation as well as a blow-by-blow of the passage of one of the key pieces of ComEd legislation at the center of the indictment: The 2016 Future Energy Jobs Act.

He testified that the last-minute arm-twisting of lawmakers orchestrated by the speaker on the bill helped make the difference between passing the legislation or it coming up a few votes short. Environmental and organized labor lobbyists also rallied behind the bill that Exelon, ComEd’s parent company, said needed to pass to keep open the clean-air nuclear plants and save jobs.

Cousineau’s testimony describing Madigan’s backroom muscle illustrated the deft political jujitsu that a politician can perform outside of the public view to whip up votes from other lawmakers in order to pass a bill that he actually did not vote upon himself.

The move to refrain from voting, which Madigan sometimes employed on various legislation, created the illusion that he’d recused himself or steered clear of the issue when he in fact sent his troops out to round up votes.

When Cousineau was asked in his direct testimony whether Madigan’s direction to “go out and work the bill” made a difference, he answered, “I think it was a part of it, yes.”

But on cross-examination, Cousineau said the effort to marshal votes for the Future Energy Jobs Act was no different from what happens on many bills that have lots of moving parts and varied interest groups and stakeholders.

“So in this big dramatic call, essentially what happened is the speaker asked you to do your job just as he had many, many times before?” Cotter asked.

“Yes, that was certainly part of my job,” Cousineau replied.

“Yeah. It wasn’t drama. It was Tuesday,” Cotter shot back. “It was just another day at work for you, right? (The) speaker wants me to get some votes for something that the Democratic caucus and the speaker favor, right?

“Yes, I mean, this was a big vote, but there are plenty of big votes that we took,” Cousineau said. When asked if he felt he’d done anything illegal, Cousineau answered, “No, sir.”

Madigan put so much faith in Cousineau that he gave him the most politically important position on the speaker’s staff and made him political director of the Madigan-controlled state Democratic Party, an organization that Madigan mostly co-opted to help House Democrats hold the majority and keep his 36-year nationwide record run as leader of the House intact.

Technically, Cousineau ran Madigan’s House issues development staff and was seen as the speaker’s in-house political director — a power vested in him to keep the close tabs on the House Democratic operations. He worked on candidate recruitment and assigned staffers to help out on primary and general election campaigns as they filed for leave of absences during the campaign seasons.

Often during his testimony, Cousineau would be asked who would make the final decisions on what went down. To no one’s surprise, the answer would be clear: Michael J. Madigan.

The secret recordings between McClain and Cousineau revealed a closeness — a relationship forged in the trenches as they worked together to deliver for the speaker time and again in the arcane and intensive world of Springfield politics.

Once Cousineau left Madigan’s office to become a lobbyist, McClain spoke to Cousineau with the fondness and respect of a mentor giving his star protege sage advice, a point underscored by a secret recording of their call on April 11, 2018 — only weeks after billionaire J.B. Pritzker won the Democratic primary to take on Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Madigan’s nemesis.

“You sound tired,” McClain told Cousineau on the call played in court.

McClain then lightheartedly asked Cousineau how it was going with his relatively new work as a lobbyist, which McClain jokingly referred to as “the dark side.”

Cousineau described how it was “stressful” but that “nothing will be as stressful as those campaign days.” Further, Cousineau said the campaigning “was good training.”

But McClain quickly got to the bottom line: “As long as we always remember who our real client is.”

“Yep,” Cousineau replied.

“It’s not easy, but it mollifies it,” said McClain.

Listen to the audio:

McClain’s comments echoed other evidence showing he always considered Madigan to be his primary client, even when lobbying for ComEd or some other entity. As one former ComEd executive testified, McClain’s dual roles were so well known he was viewed as a “double agent.”

Also evident from the first two weeks of testimony has been the revolving door between Madigan’s office and lucrative careers in the private sector as lobbyists or for businesses with interests in Springfield.

Among them was Cousineau, who testified that he interviewed for a high-placed executive job with ComEd in 2017. Pramaggiore tried so hard to get Cousineau to come work for ComEd that she pumped up previous offers the company presented to him and then upped the ante by proposing a signing bonus, according to Cousineau.

Instead, Cousineau went to Cornerstone Government Affairs, based in Washington, where he signed up as a contract lobbyist for ComEd, part of a growing list of clients eager to pay to have a guy so well connected to Madigan on their side.

Even though he had left the speaker’s staff and had a portfolio of lobbying clients, Cousineau took part in the Sunday morning strategy session with Madigan in a telephone conference call on Dec. 9, 2018, only weeks before Pritzker and the new General Assembly were sworn in.

Also on the call were McClain, theoretically retired from lobbying but still working for ComEd as a consultant while juggling multiple political “assignments” from Madigan; Heather Wier Vaught, a former chief legal counsel for Madigan who had recently registered as a contract lobbyist for ComEd; the speaker’s chief of staff, Jessica Basham; his House lawyer, Justin Cox; and Craig Willert, who held the job Cousineau once held under Madigan.

Prosecutors used a snippet of the conversation to demonstrate McClain’s influence as a close adviser to the speaker when Madigan asked the group to help him decide what lawmakers should serve on which committees, who should chair the committees, and who should be on his leadership team.

“But in the case of the majority leader, I view that as my appointment,” Madigan said in his flat, Southwest Side accent. “And I have no compunction about saying that to anybody that wants to listen to me.”

He concluded his point with his wry comment that “every once in a while the speaker gets to do what he wants to do.”

But McClain took the Sunday conference call into a deeper set of factors, such as developing a couple of extra “controlled committees,” a phrase used for important committees loaded with loyal lawmakers, such as the Revenue Committee and the Executive Committee, where chairs can “withstand the attacks” and protect “strong allies of the House Democratic caucus.”

McClain explained that having strong chairs leading committees gave the speaker the opportunity to kill bills in subcommittees rather than having to use his all-powerful House Rules Committee, which often took the heat when the speaker wanted to block a bill he didn’t like.

And the bonus that McClain explained is that the bill could be buried in a “working subcommittee,” telling Madigan it is another venue to get his way “without your fingerprints.”

It is not unusual, of course, and Republicans would likely do the same kind of maneuver if they held the majority in the House. But that hasn’t been the case for more than a quarter of a century.

The secret recordings also gave a glimpse into how McClain played an integral role in Madigan’s fundraising operation — another key source of the speaker’s power.

On one call, from October 2018, Reyes, the political operative who was once one of Madigan’s lead connections to Hispanic politics, asked McClain where to hand in a batch of $90,000 in political contributions he rounded up and a second batch of “direct contributions.”

McClain, who had helped Reyes negotiate a favorable contract for legal business with ComEd, replied he should take one batch to the law office, which prosecutors have said was Madigan’s downtown law firm. McClain said taking the money to the law office “will punctuate a little bit more, Victor.”

Laughing, Reyes said, “Got it. OK. I’ll do that.”

McClain also advised where the rest should go and told Reyes to make sure the money got recorded “on the magic list,” described in the trial as a collection of lobbyists and others long helpful to the speaker.

“I got it,” Reyes said, laughing again. “I got it.”