Rich Miller: Feds convict Madigan, Blagojevich gets pardoned in same week

Mike Madigan knew for a very long time that the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI badly wanted to put his head on a spike.

It was no secret. Everybody knew it. Madigan was investigated over and over again, but nothing ever came of it.

“This was a guy they wanted to go after, and they gathered as much as they could against him and something stuck,” the Madigan/McClain jury foreman told the Chicago Tribune.

After the now-pardoned Rod Blagojevich was arrested by the feds in a pre-dawn raid on unseemly corruption charges and was impeached by Madigan’s House, then-Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn appointed a blue-ribbon committee to recommend ethics changes, chaired by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins, who’d helped put George Ryan in prison.

Madigan had been convinced that Blagojevich was a crook for several years. The House Speaker, for instance, would never agree to a major capital plan because he believed the governor and his pals would try to put their grubby paws on every dollar.

But instead of focusing mainly on the executive branch – which had seen the indictments of two governors in a row by that time – the former prosecutor Collins’ commission focused quite significant attention on the General Assembly, and on Madigan in particular.

Most folks just figured that Mike Madigan had avoided the long arm of federal law by being extra careful. And he may have been. But the arrogance of immense power apparently overrode his sense of self-preservation.

He paid a big price last week – two days after Blagojevich received a full pardon from President Donald Trump. Try to put that in a movie and they’d tell you it just wasn’t believable.

The jury believed the prosecution’s (persuasive) arguments that Madigan knew of the move to put the Speaker’s cronies into do-nothing ComEd-related jobs (four counts). Madigan’s insanely unwise decision to associate himself with the widely known scumbag Danny Solis got him guilty verdicts on six more counts.

Madigan was convicted on 10 of 23 charges. It’s possible that Madigan, 82, could spend the rest of his life in prison, while Blagojevich may end up serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Serbia.

A few more points:

• The federal government’s much-ballyhooed RICO charge against Mike Madigan and Mike McClain was rejected by jurors 11-1, the jury foreman told some Chicago news media outlets. The foreman told the Tribune that it was part of a “government overreach” against Madigan. The feds almost never lose racketeering cases, but most jurors apparently bought the defense argument that the U.S. Attorney was prosecuting the Mike Madigan “myth” instead of Mike Madigan the man.

• I really thought the government had Madigan cold on the Chinatown thing. They had Madigan on tape numerous times talking with Solis and his consigliere Mike McClain about a land-transfer bill to help a favored developer buy a Chinatown parking lot and build a hotel and how that would result in a new law firm client.

But 10 out of 12 jurors apparently bought the argument that Madigan’s longtime property tax law partner Bud Getzendanner had the final say over who would become a client and that he would never approve a new client with state land transfer issues before the House.

• Two federal trials have now directly addressed the AT&T charges. Both trials have resulted in hung juries on this topic.

Back in October of 2022, AT&T paid $23 million and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement “to resolve a federal criminal investigation into alleged misconduct involving the company’s efforts to unlawfully influence (Madigan),” the Justice Department declared at the time.

The feds put former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza on trial, but the jury was unable to convict.

Madigan and McClain were also charged with participating in a bribery scheme in which La Schiazza hired former Rep. Eddie Acevedo, D-Chicago, for a no-show job to help the company pass a bill to exempt the company from having to provide universal landline service. The jury hung 10-2 in favor of acquittal.

The AT&T provision was included in an omnibus bill that had been painstakingly devised over a period of years, had bipartisan support and backing from organized labor, and, most importantly, was part of a 2017 effort to test whether Republicans would help break the notorious Bruce Rauner budget impasse because the bill also included a 911 call center service fee increase. The bill passed, Rauner’s veto was overridden, and a budget was approved shortly thereafter.

On this point, the feds truly did go after the myth and not the facts.

• Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.