McCann's mother-in-law testifies on second day of former state senator's federal trial
The mother-in-law of former state senator and gubernatorial candidate William "Sam" McCann testified Wednesday during his federal trial that she had little, if any, knowledge of payments made to her from her son-in-law's political committees and little knowledge of payments made from an account she shared with her daughter to him.
Magdalene "Maggie" Ramey, mother of McCann's wife, Vicki, said during witness testimony that she set up the account at Litchfield Bank and Trust in September 2016 alongside her daughter as a way to prevent overdrafts and provide her with money when she was away for her job as a nurse.
More: Springfield residents could see major spike in water rates soon
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of Illinois, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Bass, showed Ramey a series of checks from McCann's campaign account to the shared account, including several that paid Ramey thousands of dollars in fees for "consulting".
Each time she was showed the checks, Ramey said that she was unaware of them and was able to identify both McCann and his wife as signing the checks.
In addition, she was also showed checks made out from her account to McCann and others and was also unaware of those transactions. She told Bass on the stand that she didn't know why McCann was using campaign funds in this way.
Later in the testimony, Ramey was shown a rental agreement from McCann that was made to himself for one of his RVs on RVshare, using the address of her home on one of the accounts. She said that she was not aware of her address being used in this way and didn't authorize the use of her address for that account.
Ramey's testimony was part of a busy second day of the bench trial against McCann, which included further details on a series of purchases allegedly made by McCann using the campaign funds.
Nick Xamis, general manager of Westown Ford in Jacksonville, spoke on McCann's purchase of a Ford Expedition in 2017 through the campaign account, while James Warren, a Texas-based insurance adjuster, talked about selling him one of his RVs in 2018.
The RVshare account came into focus when Tom Klenotic, vice president of finance for the company, spoke about McCann setting up two separate accounts to rent himself his own RVs, which was considered a red flag upon further examination.
Klenotic said that they took the step of preventing McCann from being able to make any sort of payment on the account, as they had suspicious that he split himself in two in order to rent from himself. When asked by Bass if there was any reason to do this for economic reasons, as it cost $11,000 a month for the rentals, he said that he couldn't think of one.
More testimony came from Sean Denney, director of government relations for the Illinois Education Association, who spoke about IEA's endorsements of McCann during his time in the State Senate. He said that IEA didn't provide any kind of permission to use their donations for personal use and said that he never returned any of the funds provided when he stopped running for office.
In addition, he said that he was unaware of any sort of alleged conversation allowing him to use IEA donations to repair one of McCann's vehicles.
More: Girls flag football becomes officially sanctioned sport by the IHSA
McCann was indicted in February 2021 on charges that he used hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds for personal use, with the trial being delayed for three years before finally getting underway on Tuesday.
He served as a state senator for 2011-19, also making a third-party run for governor in 2018 under the Conservative Party label. He received 4% of the statewide vote, performing best in rural areas in west-central Illinois.
If convicted, McCann faces up to 25 years in prison.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Sam McCann's mother-in-law testifies during second day of trial
