Michael McClain, lobbyist and Madigan confidant at the center of the ComEd bribery scandal, finally faces sentencing

Chicago Tribune

4 days ago

Of all the players swirling in the bribery scandal involving former House Speaker Michael Madigan, from precinct captains and political directors to legislators and lobbyists, one man held the ultimate catbird seat:
Michael Francis McClain.
As a longtime lobbyist for utility giant Commonwealth Edison who doubled as Madigan's closest confidant, McClain toiled for years in relative obscurity, known mostly by Springfield insiders and political reporters as the former legislator from downstate Quincy with the thick prescription glasses who always seemed to be hanging around Madigan's office suite in the Capitol.
But it was through his close relationship with Illinois' most powerful and reticent politician, prosecutors say, that McClain was able to leverage knowledge of the speaker's thinking to induce ComEd executives to lavish money on Madigan's cronies and scramble to meet his myriad other demands.
Now, more than two years after McClain's conviction in the historic 'ComEd Four' bribery case, McClain is scheduled to learn his fate Thursday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where he faces sentencing in what has become one of the biggest bribery scandals in state history.
McClain, 77, will be the third of the four defendants to be sentenced in the case, and as with the others, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah will have wide latitude in deciding a punishment.
Earlier this week, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore was given two years in prison, while John Hooker, the utility's former top internal lobbyist, received a year and a half behind bars at a hearing last week.
Consultant Jay Doherty, the former head of the City Club of Chicago, will be sentenced next month. Prosecutors on Tuesday asked for a 15-month prison term for Doherty, saying his 'discreet handling and willingness to conceal the true nature' of subcontractor payments to Madigan associates were 'vitally important' to the scheme.
Prosecutors have asked for nearly six years in prison for McClain, writing in a recent court filing that the 'stunning' scheme was his brainchild and was 'illegal to its core.'
'In securing benefits for both Madigan and ComEd, McClain corrupted the legislative process and the internal control processes of a large, regulated utility,' prosecutors said. 'McClain's repeated overstepping of legal lines in this case is stunning.'
McClain's attorneys asked for probation, stating in a filing of their own that McClain merely passed along 'a handful of job recommendations' from Madigan because of his powerful position as speaker and the fact that they were close friends.
'Doing so was legal and constitutionally protected lobbying,' defense attorneys Patrick Cotter and David Niemeier wrote. 'The government's failure to make the critical distinction between a favor done with intent to lawfully curry favor with a public official, as opposed to the trading of gifts for actions done by that official, was at the heart of this case.'
The hearing marks an important milestone in McClain's legal saga, which began in May 2019 when the feds raided his home. Four years later, in May 2023, he was found guilty on all counts in the ComEd Four trial. That was followed by another trial with Madigan himself that ended earlier this year with a jury hung on all counts against McClain.
The sentencing also happens to come six years to the day that the Tribune first reported the feds were looking into thousands of dollars in checks that McClain and other ComEd-connected lobbyists had sent to Kevin Quinn, a top Madigan political operative ousted after he was accused of sexually harassing a campaign staffer.
Later in 2019, the Tribune first disclosed McClain's cellphone had been wiretapped by the FBI — which ultimately formed the lynchpin of the entire investigation.
In the ensuing years, Illinois has gotten to know McClain in a level of detail far beyond most criminal defendants. Through three criminal trials, including the perjury case against former Madigan chief of staff Tim Mapes, there have been dozens of wiretapped calls played in court and hundreds of his emails publicly displayed, conversations that painted a picture of how McClain used his unfettered access to Madigan to get some of Illinois' top executives to scramble to meet their demands.
The wiretaps and other evidence revealed McClain's use of crude code words for Madigan, often referring to the speaker as 'our Friend' or 'Himself,' as well as his penchant for archaic military terminology, such as when he told Madigan in a retirement note he would remain 'at the bridge with my musket' for the speaker.
The communications also captured McClain at his most blunt, telling Pramaggiore in an email in 2016 that ComEd's reluctance to kick more money to a Madigan-preferred law firm would have dire repercussions down the road.
'I know the drill and so do you,' he wrote to Pramaggiore. 'If you do not get involved and resolve this issue of 850 hours for his law firm per year then he will go to our Friend. Our Friend will call me and then I will call you. Is this a drill we must go through?'
In his sentencing filing, McClain's attorney, Patrick Cotter, noted that witnesses at trial all testified McClain was an extremely skilled lobbyist and hard worker, someone who sought, as all good lobbyists do, to build relationships with powerful politicians and advocate his clients' positions.
What's more, Cotter wrote, there was nothing illegal about his overtures, regardless of how they were articulated.
'Simply put, over almost a decade, Mr. McClain passed along and advocated for a handful of job recommendations from Madigan because of Madigan's position both as an influential member of the General Assembly and, in no small measure, because Madigan was Mr. McClain's old and close friend,' Cotter wrote. 'Doing so was legal and constitutionally protected lobbying. It should not have been treated as a crime.'
Cotter also said it would be 'unjust' to make McClain a scapegoat for the state's history of political corruption or some abstract symbol 'to promote whatever current notion (prosecutors) maintain of 'good government.''
'Mr. McClain has not held political office in over 30 years,' Cotter wrote. 'He is neither responsible for, nor is it just to punish him to any degree for generations of the way politics has been conducted by other people in this state, or practices that pre-date his birth and may, one suspects, continue in various, perhaps different, incarnations long after he is gone.'
McClain and his three co-defendants — Pramaggiore, Hooker and Doherty — were convicted on all counts in May 2023 after a two-month trial.
The case was then beset by a series of delays, first because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that reset the rules for a key federal bribery statute and then again after the death of the judge who'd presided over the trial, Harry Leinenweber.
The bulk of the ComEd allegations centered on a cadre of Madigan allies who were paid a total of $1.3 million from 2011 through 2019 through allegedly do-nothing consulting contracts. Among the recipients were two former aldermen, Frank Olivo and Michael Zalewski, precinct captains Ray Nice and Edward Moody, and former state Rep. Edward Acevedo.
In addition, prosecutors alleged ComEd also hired a clouted law firm run by political operative Victor Reyes, distributed numerous college internships within Madigan's 13th Ward fiefdom, and backed former McPier chief Juan Ochoa, a 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 alleged, 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.
Madigan, meanwhile, was convicted in a separate trial of an array of schemes that included the ComEd bribery payments. He was sentenced in June to seven and a half years in prison.
Defense attorneys for the ComEd Four have repeatedly argued the government was seeking to criminalize legal lobbying and job recommendations that are at the heart of the state's legitimate political system.
But prosecutors say the entire scope of the scheme is still fair game, even if the specific bribery counts were dropped — a position that Shah has agreed with.