Prosecutors want up to 5 years in prison for former Madigan aide Tim Mapes, while defense asks for community service
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Prosecutors are asking for up to about five years in prison for Tim Mapes, the former chief of staff to House Speaker Michael Madigan, arguing in a court filing late Monday that Mapes lied to a federal grand jury in a cynical attempt to protect his boss instead of serving the citizens of Illinois.
“Mapes’ lies were calculated to thwart the government’s sprawling investigation of a series of unlawful schemes calculated to corrupt the government of this state at the highest levels,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Diane MacArthur and Julia Schwartz wrote in their 28-page filing, which seeks a sentence between 51 and 63 months in prison.
The prosecutors argued when a seasoned public servant like Mapes “makes the calculated and deliberate decision to lie in the grand jury, the criminal justice system, and our entire democracy, is threatened.”
Mapes’ attorneys, meanwhile, asked in a filing of their own for a sentence of probation and community service, arguing he never stood to personally benefit from any of his alleged misstatements and that while he accepts the jury’s verdict he “disagrees with it and continues to maintain his innocence.”
“Tim Mapes is a good man,” defense attorneys Andrew Porter and Katie Hill wrote in their 47-page filing. “... He has spent decades working very hard (and expecting it of others) trying to make the State of Illinois better, fairer, and more compassionate to its citizens.”
U.S. District Judge John Kness is scheduled to sentence Mapes on Feb. 12.
Despite Mapes’ reputation among some in Springfield as a power-hungry bully, the defense filing characterized him as a down-to-earth family man who rose from humble beginnings and was always “looking out for the little guy.”
The defense also submitted dozens of letters to the judge from Mapes’ family, friends and former colleagues describing him as a mentor, someone who would always go out of his way to help others, even when no one was looking.
“He does so not for any reward, but because he believes it is the right thing to do,” Mapes’ lawyers said.
The letters were filed under seal, so the identities of the authors could not be determined. But several purportedly came from former Illinois legislators and colleagues on the speaker’s staff, including one that claimed the media mischaracterized Mapes’ now infamous “No One Gets in to See the Wizard” sign, which was displayed in his office and was widely seen as a hallmark of his role as Madigan’s loyal gatekeeper.
The sign, which was a gift from then-state Senate President John Cullerton, “was meant to throw some humor on the impossible nature of the job Tim had, not some pronouncement of power as the media portrayed it,” stated the letter-writer, described in the filing as a former colleague who had worked with Mapes for decades and retired in 2014.
Mapes, 69, was convicted at trial in August of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice charges alleging he lied to a grand jury in 2021 in a failed attempt to protect Madigan from a widening political corruption investigation.
When he went in for his interview, Mapes had been immunized by the U.S. attorney’s office, meaning he could not be prosecuted for what he said as long as it was the truth.
In its decision, the jury found Mapes had lied on every occasion alleged by prosecutors in the indictment, which consisted mostly of a series of “I don’t recall” answers to questions about “assignments” Madigan was giving to his longtime confidant, Michael McClain.
The jury’s swift verdict was the latest in a string of convictions stemming from the federal investigation into Madigan’s once-vaunted political operation.
In May 2023, McClain was found guilty along with three others in a bribery conspiracy to funnel payments from Commonwealth Edison to Madigan associates in hopes of gaining the speaker’s influence over the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.
Madigan lost the speakership and resigned his House seat in 2021, a year before being indicted along with McClain in a separate racketeering case alleging Madigan sold his political office for personal gain. That trial is set to begin in October.
Mapes spent years as Madigan’s chief of staff and executive director of the state Democratic Party, when, as the speaker’s premier gatekeeper, he strode the halls of power with an almost autocratic style. He also served as the clerk of the House, where he was known as a details-driven micromanager adept at keeping the legislative trains running.
Madigan unceremoniously dumped Mapes from all three positions in June 2018 after a staffer accused him of sexual harassment in a year in which the #MeToo movement cost the careers of several Madigan allies.
In Mapes’ trial, Madigan, McClain and Mapes were described as the major players in a triangle of power that held sway over the longtime speaker’s Democratic House caucus, government operations and major grip on statewide politics.
Mapes’ attorneys argued at trial that Mapes did his “level best” to provide truthful answers in his grand jury testimony. They also accused prosecutors of asking open-ended questions and failing to provide Mapes with corroborating materials that might refresh his recollection of years-old conversations.
[ Tim Mapes perjury trial: Evidence seen and heard by the jury ]
Porter argued to the jury that Mapes had no motive to lie, particularly since Madigan had forced his resignation over harassment and bullying allegations that Mapes had denied.
“The government throws out (it was to) ‘protect the boss’. ... Why would he fall on his sword for a guy who kicked him to the curb three years before?” Porter asked the jury.
A slew of Democratic Springfield insiders lined up to testify for the prosecution, describing McClain as one of Madigan’s closest advisers, who had served with Madigan in the state legislature decades ago and had singular access to the speaker as a lobbyist for ComEd.
It was also well known around the Capitol that McClain continued to do sensitive work for the speaker after McClain’s retirement from lobbying in 2016, according to testimony.
Prosecutors also played for the jury multiple wiretapped calls where Mapes was captured talking with McClain about issues he claimed in the grand jury to know little or nothing about.
Among them was a Madigan-orchestrated plan to dump then-state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, who was potentially facing sexual harassment allegations. On one call from Oct. 31, 2018, McClain told Mapes he was going to wait until a batch of Lang’s fundraising checks cleared, “And then I gotta tell him that he’s gotta move on. That he has no future in the House.”
“Will you be wearing your big boy pants that day?” Mapes asked, laughing.
Other calls showed Mapes and McClain as all business, hashing out strategies and conducting crisis management for Madigan in order to protect the speaker from any fallout.
When the wheels started to come off the Madigan cart after Mapes’ sudden departure, McClain fretted that he couldn’t find Mapes’ secret list of fundraisers. Other aides who stepped in to “pick up the pieces” worried that they were dropping the ball.
It clearly left a bad taste in McClain’s mouth. A few days after Mapes left, McClain told Mapes he still hadn’t talked to Madigan about it.
“I don’t think I can contain myself right now around him,” McClain said. “I think I would say, ‘I never thought you’d be the one to leave the foxhole.’ But I just ... haven’t even wanted to talk to him. You know what I mean, Tim?”
The FBI wiretaps on McClain’s phone happened to coincide with a year of reckoning for Madigan, when a series of allies became engulfed in #MeToo scandals, an issue that weakened Madigan’s status within his Democratic caucus.
Prosecutors noted in their filing that Mapes’ abrupt ouster on June 6, 2018, came after high-profile harassment accusations by Sherri Garrett, a clerk who worked for Mapes. An outside investigation led by Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor, “concluded that Mapes violated speaker’s office policies by dismissing and mocking claims of sexual harassment in the speaker’s office,” prosecutors noted in the filing.
Hickey, who was selected by Madigan’s own House Democrats to investigate the allegations of improper behavior, found Garrett “credible” and summarized the “culture of fear and intimidation that Mapes fostered in the speaker’s office,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the report completely contradicted Mapes’ efforts to cast himself as a humble everyman.
“Hickey’s findings paint a picture — consistent with Mapes’ criminal conduct in this case — of a person whose sole focus was to promote himself and the speaker, without respect for the interests of others,” prosecutors wrote.
A stiff sentence, prosecutors said, “will send an important message to those in Springfield and elsewhere within this state who still foolishly cling to Mapes’ view that circling the wagons to ‘protect the boss’ is acceptable — even if it means lying to federal law enforcement and the grand jury.”
