New charges against Madigan, AT&T raise questions about prosecutors’ timing close to November election

Former House Speaker Michael Madigan isn’t on the November ballot. In fact, he’s been out of office for nearly two years.

But when new charges were announced Friday accusing Madigan of conspiring to help AT&T Illinois pass legislation in 2017 in exchange for a do-nothing job for an associate, the political spin machines rumbled into action.

Candidates from around the state weighed in, with Republicans from Chicago’s suburbs to far downstate Edwardsville using Madigan’s name as a cudgel.

House Republican leader Jim Durkin, who sparred with Madigan for years in Springfield, called the developments “another sad but outrageous chapter in the ongoing saga of Democratic corruption in Illinois.” It was a blow delivered despite the state’s history of corruption on both sides of the aisle, notably including former Republican Gov. George Ryan, who served more than five years in prison after his own scandal.

Republican governor candidate Darren Bailey sought to tie Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, to Madigan, the former chair of the Illinois Democratic Party, calling for “real ethics reform with teeth” that would hold wrongdoers accountable.

The U.S. attorney’s office announcing the charges less than three weeks before voters go to the polls on Nov. 8 left some questioning whether prosecutors have unfairly given added ammunition to one side of the political spectrum.

Often cited in the criticism is a common misperception: That there is a written policy within the U.S. Justice Department not to bring political corruption-related charges within 60 days of an election.

But while the Justice Department has traditionally sent warnings to field offices about “election year sensitivities,” it’s far more nebulous than most think, aimed more at maintaining the perception of impartiality than banning political-related charges from being brought.

In May, Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memo to Department of Justice employees that was nearly identical to one sent out by his predecessors in previous election cycles, in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

The two-page memo, which was made public over the summer, said “partisan politics must play no role in the decisions of federal investigators or prosecutors regarding any investigations or criminal charges.”

“Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party,” the memo stated.

The memo directed DOJ employees to reach out to the department’s Public Integrity Section if there were any questions about the appearances of any investigation or announcements “near the time of a primary or general election.”

Legal experts who spoke to the Tribune noted that the memo says nothing specific about how long before an election the policy takes effect, or what exactly would constitute a violation.

“There is no hard and fast rule here at all,” said Renato Mariotti, a legal affairs expert and former federal prosecutor in Chicago. “It’s merely guidance regarding the need to be concerned about any potential appearance of the Justice Department being involved in the political process.”

Jeffrey Cramer, who also worked for years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, said prosecutors have to “call balls and strikes” all the time when it comes to deciding when to take certain investigative steps or bring a case into court, and political ramifications are only one potential factor.

“In a perfect world, when a case is made, you bring it, irrespective of any election,” said Cramer, now the senior managing director of the Chicago-based security firm Guidepost Solutions. “That’s probably naive in the real world … but if you’re sitting on something and you drop it the day after the election, people could say, hey wait a minute, didn’t the public have a right to know this? It’s really a no-win scenario.”

Cramer also noted that Madigan is “a step removed because” he’s out of office and not on any ballot.

“Just because Madigan might be fodder for some political commercials is not really the concern of the U.S. attorney’s office,” he said.

Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney John Lausch, had no comment Monday.

The new cases announced Friday were just the latest development in a sprawling political corruption investigation that led to the downfall of Madigan, who served a nationwide record 36 years as speaker before he was dethroned last year and quit.

Federal prosecutors unsealed a superseding indictment against Madigan and his longtime confidant, Michael McClain, adding allegations they participated in a scheme to funnel payments from AT&T to a Madigan associate in exchange for the speaker’s influence over a bill AT&T Illinois wanted passed in Springfield.

Also charged as part of the investigation was Paul La Schiazza, former president of AT&T Illinois, who was accused of orchestrating and approving the payments.

It also was revealed Friday that the telephone giant has agreed to pay a $23 million fine as part of a deferred prosecution deal with prosecutors that would see the charges against the company dropped after two years.

The issue of a DOJ moratorium on charges before an election has been a hot topic ever since the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in August as part an ongoing investigation into top-secret government documents he’d allegedly stored there.

Many legal experts have opined that any criminal charges being mulled in the case would certainly be put on hold until after the midterm elections to avoid exactly the kind of scenario laid out in Garland’s memo.

That same situation has played out in Chicago before, albeit on a far smaller scale. In late November 2018, the FBI famously raided the City Hall offices of Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, who at the time headed the City Council’s Finance Committee and was one of the most powerful politicians in the city.

Burke was charged with extortion in a federal criminal complaint filed on Jan. 2, 2019, just 55 days before voters went to polls in the Feb. 26 citywide elections. Despite the charges, Burke held off two challengers and kept the 14th Ward seat he’s held since 1969.

But the case had massive ramifications for other politicians who were tied to Burke, a Democratic rainmaker with his hands on many of the levers of power in city and state politics.

Among those most negatively affected by the Burke indictment was Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who had benefited from a fundraiser thrown at Burke’s home just weeks earlier. Preckwinkle wound up losing by a landslide in the runoff election to Lori Lightfoot, who had hammered Preckwinkle as the establishment candidate with long-standing ties to Burke.

Just last month, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago also brought new charges against another politician whose name remains on the Nov. 8 ballot: State Sen. Emil Jones III, who is accused of accepting a bribe from a red-light camera company executive in exchange for killing legislation that went against the company’s interests.

The charges brought another volley of criticism from Republicans, including Durkin, who likened the Illinois Democratic Party to an “organized crime family.”

While lesser in scope than the Madigan case, Jones is a sitting legislator and running unopposed, so his reelection is certain unless he were to resign in advance — something Pritzker has called for but Jones III has resisted so far.

Meanwhile, Republicans had spent years trying to make Madigan an albatross that would drag other Democrats down, with little to show for it.

But that political dynamic changed when federal prosecutors in July 2020 named Madigan “Public Official A” in the bribes-for-favors scandal.

Similar to the AT&T case, Lausch reached a deferred prosecution agreement with ComEd in which the company agreed to pay a $200 million fine and prosecutors agreed to drop a bribery charge against the utility three years later if it fully cooperated in the investigation.

ComEd acknowledged it gave Madigan allies legal work and do-little-to-nothing jobs, provided summer internships to a bevy of college students living in his 13th Ward base of power, and even allowed him to muscle his preferred appointment onto the state-regulated firm’s board of directors — all as a way to stay on his good side when the company sought to pass bills that helped its bottom line.

In the 2020 fall general election, Pritzker lost his high-profile push to tax people with the biggest paychecks at a higher rate than other Illinois wage earners and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride became the first sitting member of the high court to fail to get the 60% of the vote necessary to be retained on the bench.

The Madigan baggage proved to be too much, and top Democrats started saying he should give up the chairmanship of the Illinois Democratic Party, which he had held since 1998, and pressure started building for him to give up the speakership.

Madigan persisted, though, until it became clear early last year that he could not put together the 60 votes needed to add another term to his reign as speaker.

His own Democratic caucus, fueled by 19 mostly female lawmakers, some of whom were still angered at the way he’d handled sexual harassment issues among his top staff, refused to give him the 60 votes he needed to stay on as speaker, despite holding a 73-45 edge over Republicans. He later resigned the state representative seat he’d held over 50 years and gave up the party chairmanship.

Court watchers also know that it’s not just the big fish who draw the headlines about the timing of when federal prosecutors take action.

In 2012, for example, there was a classic case in which then-Rep. Derrick Smith, a Democrat from Chicago, had been appointed to a vacancy for a West Side seat shortly before he got charged with taking a $7,000 bribe only a week before the primary.

Given it is Chicago, and there is much skepticism in the African American community about law enforcement, Smith won the primary with nearly 77% of the vote anyway.

When Smith refused to give up the seat to be replaced with a Democratic candidate who wasn’t facing a potential prison sentence, Madigan stood on the speaker’s podium and led his House in expelling Smith from office on a 100-6 vote.

It was the first time a lawmaker was tossed out of the House for perceived misdeeds in 107 years. But Smith stayed on the ballot and won.

When the next election rolled around in 2014, Madigan flipped. He backed Smith because House Democrats said they supported their incumbents. Even though Smith still had charges pending, Madigan dumped more than $72,000 into Smith’s 2014 primary race on staffers, campaign brochures and postage expenses.

Smith lost the primary. He then lost his trial and was sentenced to five months in prison.

Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella contributed.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

rlong@chicagotribune.com