The alleged scheme by four ComEd executives and lobbyists to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan didn’t play out like it often does in the movies, with envelopes stuffed with cash passed under a table, prosecutors told the federal jury in the “ComEd Four” trial Monday.

It was far more elaborate, a web of illicit payments funneling more than a million dollars to do-nothing lobbyist “subcontractors,” a deal guaranteeing billable hours for a politically connected law firm, a lucrative board seat for Madigan’s candidate, and summer internships from people sent from the speaker’s 13th Ward.

“There isn’t an envelope in this world big enough to fit all the money that they made ComEd pay out,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said in her closing argument to the jury.

But defense attorneys scoffed at that notion, saying their clients were not only innocent, but that they were “collateral damage” in the government’s yearslong quest to bring down Madigan, the Democratic leader at the apex of Illinois politics who was long considered to be untouchable.

Toward the end of his nearly two-hour presentation, Patrick Cotter, who represents one of the speaker’s closest confidants, Michael McClain, told the jury that the entire case was “a conclusion in search of evidence.”

“They already had their target. They already knew who was guilty — it was Mike Madigan,” Cotter said, adding that once prosecutors assumed the speaker was guilty, “then everyone near him begins to look guilty.”

His voice quaking with emotion, Cotter urged the jury to “be the shield that you were meant to be.”

“The shield between an individual citizen and a very powerful government, in this case a very powerful government committed and dedicated to getting Mike Madigan,” Cotter said. “Don’t let Mike McClain be collateral damage in that war.”

The starkly disparate views of the political corruption probe that rocked Illinois politics were on full display as attorneys from both sides began making their final arguments to the jury in the ComEd Four trial, which is now in its seventh, and possibly final, week.

The jury is expected to begin deliberating the case Tuesday afternoon, following closing remarks from the final two defendants and a rebuttal argument from prosecutors.

Charged are McClain, 75, a longtime ComEd contract lobbyist; former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, 64, a lawyer and onetime rising star in Chicago’s corporate world; Jay Doherty, 69, a lobbyist and ex-president of the City Club of Chicago; and John Hooker, 74, who over a 44-year career worked his way from the utility’s mailroom to become its point man in Springfield.

The indictment alleged the four conspired to funnel $1.3 million in payments to ghost “subcontractors,” largely through Doherty’s company, who were actually Madigan’s cronies.

The utility also hired a clouted law firm run by political operative Victor Reyes, distributed numerous college internships within Madigan’s 13th Ward fiefdom, and blatantly backed former McPier chief Juan Ochoa, the friend of a Madigan ally, for an $80,000-a-year seat on the utility’s board of directors, the indictment alleged.

In return, prosecutors say, Madigan used his influence over the General Assembly to help ComEd score a series of huge legislative victories that not only rescued the company from financial instability but led to record-breaking, billion-dollar profits.

Among them was the 2011 smart grid bill that set a built-in formula for the rates ComEd could charge customers, avoiding battles with the Illinois Commerce Commission, according to the charges. ComEd also leaned on Madigan’s office to help pass the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016, which kept the formula rate in place and also rescued two nuclear plants run by an affiliated company, Exelon Generation.

Monday’s arguments reflected the wide gulf between the allegations by prosecutors and lawyers for the defendants, who have told the jury over and over that the government is seeking to criminalize legal lobbying and job recommendations that are at the center of the state’s legitimate political system.

Following Cotter’s emotional conclusion, Scott Lassar, lead attorney for Pramaggiore, told the jury that there was simply no evidence of any conspiracy.

“The reason the government didn’t prove their case is because their case was dead wrong,” Lassar said in his typically understated style. “ComEd was not bribing Madigan.”

He ended by urging the jury not to hold it against Pramaggiore because she was the CEO, and to not compromise its verdict because being found guilty of just one of the lesser charges would still be “devastating” for Pramaggiore.

“Anne Pramaggiore is completely innocent,” Lassar said. “End this nightmare for her. Send her back to her family. Find her not guilty on every count.”

In deliberating the case, jurors will have to sift through a mountain of evidence, including dozens of wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded videos, hundreds of emails and internal documents, and the live testimony of some 50 witnesses, including current and former state legislators, ComEd executives, and Madigan insiders such as former political staffer Will Cousineau and legendary precinct captain Ed Moody.

MacArthur began her more than two-hour presentation Monday with one of the most intriguing recordings in the case, a February 2019 call where McClain, Pramaggiore and Hooker talked about who would be the utility’s Madigan point person once McClain officially retired.

“There is no one right now that I can actually tell our friend, ‘This is the lead (person), and when you call that guy will snap to, or that gal will snap to, and know what to do and get back to you,” McClain said on the call. “There’s no one in the company that has that kind of smack right now.”

At the time, MacArthur said, the defendants’ “system of corruptly influencing Michael Madigan with a stream of benefits and rewards had been up and running for years,” but things were changing. Pramaggiore had moved on to become CEO of parent company Exelon Utilities. And they didn’t like or trust the man who’d replaced her at ComEd, Joe Dominguez.

McClain added on the call that he wouldn’t mind having a “daddy talk” with Dominguez, and if he wanted to fire him, “That’s fine.”

“My instinct is that I come up to Chicago and I sit down with Dominguez and I say, ‘Now look-it (expletive), if you want to pass this bill, this is what it requires. So, either you’re gonna play in the tier-one game here, or you’re gonna keep playing in your tier-two game here ... but this is like serious business, it’s millions of dollars.’”

“That is what this case is all about,” MacArthur told the jury. “The members of this inner circle had to play that tier-one game.”

MacArthur then methodically took the jury through the evidence in the case and the nine counts in the indictment, which include bribery conspiracy, circumventing internal business controls and the falsification of business records to allegedly hide the payments ComEd was making.

She said ComEd was teetering on the edge of financial disaster when McClain and his three co-defendants got together on a scheme to shower Madigan with a stream of benefits and “turn the tide” for the utility with a series of big wins in Springfield.

“Madigan wanted, ComEd gave, and ComEd got,” MacArthur said.

MacArthur also bluntly accused Pramaggiore and Hooker of lying on the witness stand when they testified in their own defense earlier this month.

In particular, the prosecutor seized upon Pramaggiore’s claim that she did not know about Madigan-backed subcontractors until the federal investigation became public in mid-2019, walking the jury through texts and recorded conversations that she said showed Pramaggiore actually knew as far back as 2013.

Among them is a now-infamous call on Feb. 18, 2019, when Marquez, who at the time was secretly cooperating with the investigation, told Pramaggiore that Doherty had subcontractors that were “just collecting checks.”

At one point on the recording, Pramaggiore said “Oh my god,” when Marquez was describing the situation. Later in the call, she advised Marquez to tell Dominguez not to change anything in the middle of the legislative session so somebody didn’t get their “nose out of joint.”

Pramaggiore testified that she didn’t remember the conversation and that the tape “proves my innocence.”

In his argument, Lassar said her reaction to Marquez’s news doesn’t jive with the government’s theory. “If she is part of the conspiracy, she’s going to say ‘Fidel, those are Madigan’s people. They’re not supposed to do any work. That’s how we get our legislation passed,’ ” Lassar said.

MacArthur, however, argued it’s the opposite: Pramaggiore was lying to “stay as far away as she possibly can from admitting knowledge of the subcontractors.”

“She said to you it proves her innocence. That is flat-out wrong,” MacArthur said. “That conversation proves her guilt.”

The jury also heard two starkly different interpretations of another key recording from 2019, when Pramaggiore told McClain that she was close to finalizing the deal to put Ochoa on ComEd’s board.

“You take good care of me and, and so does our friend and I will do the best that I can to, to take care of you,” Pramaggiore told McClain on the recording, referring to Madigan as “our friend” as McClain often did. “You’re a good man.”

MacArthur said the motive for that statement was simple. Pramaggiore was taking credit for something she’d helped deliver for Madigan, an appointment that would give him “political capital” with then-U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who had backed Ochoa for the spot.

“She wanted to let McClain know that she had gotten it done,” MacArthur said. “Madigan wanted it, and that’s why Anne Pramaggiore continued to push for it.”

Lassar, however, had a more innocent explanation, telling the jury Pramaggiore is simply a nice person who likes to make people feel good. She writes thank you notes, she rescues animals, including a donkey, Lassar said. And you could “hear the warmth in Anne’s voice” when she told McClain, “You’re a good man.”

MacArthur also focused on the undercover video recordings of several of the defendants that were made by Marquez after he was confronted by the FBI in January 2019 and agreed to cooperate.

In a video-recorded meeting with Doherty, Marquez asked what he had the subcontractors doing, and Doherty replied, “Well, not much, to answer the question.”

“They keep their mouth shut. ... But do they do anything for me on a day-to-day basis? No,” Doherty said on the recording.

Doherty also discussed how the first Madigan associate to get a subcontract with him was former Ald. Frank Olivo of Madigan’s 13th Ward in 2011 — the same year the company won legislative approval of the smart grid bill.

MacArthur noted that Doherty’s recorded explanation of the arrangement was that Hooker called up one day and said he wanted to “slug” a subcontractor onto the Doherty contract, meaning Olivo would be paid $4,000 a month for a no-work job.

To illustrate the amount of the payments, Doherty silently held up four fingers to Marquez.

Other Doherty subcontractors included Moody, fellow 13th Ward precinct captain Ray Nice, and ex-23rd Ward Ald. Mike Zalewski.

In each instance where a subcontractor was being paid, it should have been Marquez’s call, since he was supposedly in charge of all of ComEd’s lobbyists, MacArthur said. But it clearly was not his call — it was Madigan’s.

The “intermediaries” like Doherty who were enlisted to funnel payments to the subcontractors, MacArthur said, were all loyal to the speaker, people “who would keep their mouth shut. People who would not ruin the system that they had set up.”

Regarding the contract with Reyes Kurson, MacArthur noted that it guaranteed Reyes’s firm 850 hours a year of billing at a time that ComEd was vying for passage of its 2011 smart grid bill.

Reyes was also working closely with Madigan at the time to help develop Hispanic outreach.

When Reyes’ contract came up for renewal five years later, it coincided with the FEJA legislation that saved two Exelon nuclear power plants and the jobs that went with them, MacArthur said. The bill, pulling together a coalition of utilities, organized labor and environmentalists, was passed on the last day of the 2016 fall veto session.

The numerous college interns that Madigan’s 13th Ward got to place each year at ComEd also was another leg of the alleged crimes that MacArthur outlined. Many of the recommendations that came from Madigan were for students who had grade-point averages below the normal threshold, but got hired anyway.

“Those interns didn’t have to compete for the slots,” MacArthur said, adding: “If this sounds upside down, it’s because it was.”

She said the 10 internships ComEd gave to Madigan’s 13th Ward each year was not lobbying but rather a bribe to Madigan.

“When Madigan said ‘Jump,’ the defendants said, ‘How high?’” MacArthur said. “Or, in the case of the summer interns, it was, ‘How low should we go?’”

Cotter began his argument by telling the jury that after six weeks of testimony, it was clear prosecutors “have ignored every piece of evidence that came forth in this trial that was not consistent with their theory” of the case.

“There was no evidence introduced at this trial of any action taken by Madigan on any ComEd piece of legislation from 2011 to 2019,” Cotter said. “Nothing.”

He also said the reason ComEd’s legislation passed “was because of an incredible amount of very fine lobbying,” not a few jobs spread out over a decade.

“Over and over, witnesses and evidence showed you that ComEd often, regularly and without any fear of consequence, said ‘No’ to Madigan’s job recommendations,” Cotter said.

And contrary to the government’s theory, Cotter said, it was clear that McClain intended for all of the ComEd hires to do work.

“Friendship is just friendship. Lobbying is just lobbying. And politics is just politics. And none of them is illegal,” Cotter said.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

rlong@chicagotribune.com