On Tuesday Jay Doherty, Anne Pramaggiore, Michael McClain and John Hooker will be defendants at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in one of the biggest political corruption cases the state has ever seen.
, soon filled in that investigators were focused on the full scope of ComEd’s lobbying practices, including money flowing from the utility to Doherty, whose offices at the City Club had also been raided.
A cascade of federal charges soon followed, beginning with former ComEd Vice President Fidel Marquez, who’d agreed to cooperate with the feds when he was first confronted in January 2019 and made secret recordings of his associates. Marquez pleaded guilty in September 2020 and is expected to testify at trial.Two months after Marquez’s plea, the ComEd Four case was unveiled in November 2020, at the height of the pandemic — and the same month Madigan was reelected to the House for the last time.
But prosecutors allege in the ComEd Four indictment that not only did the co-conspirators know that what they were doing was illegal, it was enormously successful, with ComEd receiving at least $150 million in legislative benefits over the length of the scheme. One of the speaker’s frequent dinner companions, McClain had Madigan’s ear and helped him with campaign strategy and political fundraising. McClain even sent out fundraising pitches to political friends that he called “the most trusted of the trusted.”
And agents who searched McClain’s personal vehicle in 2019 discovered a handwritten ledger allegedly showing he was at Madigan’s beck and call “24/7,” helping to manage the speaker’s ever-growing list of associates working as ComEd subcontractors as well as the “allotment of interns” Madigan was sending to the utility giant each summer, according to prosecutors.
“And Mike, my recommendation is, go forward with Ochoa,” Madigan said, according to the prosecution filing. “So if the only complaint about Ochoa is he suffers from bankruptcy twice, so did Harry Truman.” By the time the General Assembly’s spring session was over, the bill had fallen four votes short with eight Democrats voting against the legislation. ComEd’s victory, according to the feds, came only because Madigan had paved the way.Attorneys for the defendants last week scored a couple of mild legal victories in pretrial skirmishes over what evidence can come in to the trial.
Among them are Madigan’s former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo, a paid Doherty subcontractor, and Zalewski, who first turned up in the investigation when his house was raided in May 2019. Like Olivo, Zalewski wound up landing a consulting contract with ComEd in 2018 that paid $5,000 a month, even though he never did a thing for the utility, according to the charges.Former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo at a Chicago City Council meeting November 2008.
Moody’s payments were later bumped up to $4,500 a month and were distributed through Doherty, but when Moody was appointed Cook County commissioner in 2014, his money started coming from two “intermediaries” allied with Madigan who did contract work for ComEd, according to prosecutors. Another longtime political operative to factor in the investigation is Victor Reyes, whose clout-heavy law firm Reyes Kurson was hired by ComEd in 2011, at the outset of the alleged scheme.
Hooker allegedly explained that it was “important” that Reyes Kurson get a contract, but he never mentioned any particular reason or legal expertise that the firm could bring to the table. The attorney “understood by McClain and Hooker’s comments to mean that the contract was important because it was important to Madigan,” prosecutors wrote in a recent court filing.
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