In his heyday, Tim Mapes, diminutive but domineering, was feared in Springfield.
He threatened staffers’ jobs and screamed orders on the House floor in his capacity as powerhouse Democrat Michael Madigan’s trusted lieutenant.
Formal investigations all but called Mapes’ conduct dictatorial. But you’d never guess that by looking at Mapes last week, sitting meekly and respectfully between his two lawyers in the solemn setting of a federal courtroom.
He is a little balder, a little grayer these days. His demeanor at the defense table is painstakingly placid.
But federal charges accuse him of doing in the grand jury what he did without penalty for decades in Springfield: shielding the boss, Madigan of Chicago.
”I always try to protect him, I mean, that’s my goal. It’s like in marriage,” Mapes once said, according to prosecutors in their opening statement.
Madigan is now facing sweeping racketeering charges. And last week, Mapes — Madigan’s former chief of staff, House clerk and executive director of the state Democratic Party — went to trial on charges that he tried to thwart that investigation.
Prosecutors accuse Mapes of lying about his knowledge of the political activities of Madigan and ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain, both before and after Madigan ousted Mapes in a June 2018 #MeToo scandal amid accusations Mapes disputed.
During the trial’s first week, Mapes’ attorneys contended he honestly could not recall answers to certain questions when he appeared before federal grand jurors on March 31, 2021. They complain he was hamstrung because prosecutors didn’t offer to show records or other evidence that could refresh his memory.
The Mapes case represents a relatively small piece of the broad public corruption investigation federal prosecutors have brought against Madigan, who was ousted from his speakership and left the House in 2021.
Even so, the matter comes with high political and symbolic stakes. The government already bagged a big win this year with the convictions of the ComEd Four, a group that included McClain as well as the former CEO of ComEd and two other lobbyists.
Mapes, 68, of Springfield, could go to prison if convicted. He faces counts of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice. The latter charge calls for up to 20 years in federal prison, while lying to a grand jury carries a five-year maximum prison sentence.
[ Former top Michael Madigan aide on trial: What you need to know — and what’s next for Tim Mapes ]
Perjury can be tricky to prove. Prosecutors must convince jurors that Mapes intentionally lied about his knowledge of Madigan’s relationship with McClain. But a conviction would give more momentum to federal prosecutors, who have their eye on next year’s Madigan-McClain racketeering trial.
No audio of Mapes’ testimony has been played yet for jurors. Neither has audio of Mapes talking to McClain, whose cellphone was wiretapped by federal agents for months. That audio, along with a fuller picture of Mapes’ grand jury transcript, is expected to be introduced as early as this week.
Prosecutors have put on witnesses to demonstrate that Madigan, Mapes and McClain worked extraordinarily closely — an attempt to convince jurors it would be completely implausible for Mapes not to know what the other two men were doing.
Just as they did in the earlier ComEd Four case, prosecutors at the Mapes trial turned last week to incumbent Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, to explain how Springfield works — this time with particular emphasis on how Mapes, Madigan and McClain formed a trio with incomparable influence over the Illinois House Democratic caucus.
In all, there are seven questions prosecutors charge Mapes fudged on to protect Madigan. Generally, they allege Mapes lied when he testified that McClain didn’t tell Mapes about his discussions with Madigan or pass along any insight about what Madigan told McClain to do.
Some of the questions Mapes was asked were open-ended. For example, he was asked what he’d heard from other people about McClain performing activities for Madigan between 2017 and 2019.
“I don’t recall that — that I would have been part of any of that dialogue,” Mapes told the 2021 grand jury. “I don’t know why I would be.”
Mapes’ attorneys maintained the prosecutors cherry-picked from more than 650 questions at the grand jury, a frightening setting where Mapes told the truth but did not want to guess or make assumptions.
While on the witness stand, Rita, a veteran of 20-plus years in Springfield, went old school as he explained how closely Mapes, McClain and Madigan worked together.
Using his fingers to draw a triangle in the air, Rita told jurors Madigan sat at the top of a small organizational chart. McClain and Mapes held down the corners along each side, Rita explained.
Rita even described how the three lined up along one wall of the speaker’s Capitol suite, with Mapes in a corner office overseeing the front lawn and Madigan in a spacious room only footsteps from the House floor.
Despite being a lobbyist, McClain often would set up shop in a conference room in between the Mapes and Madigan offices, Rita said.
Rita also regaled the federal courtroom with stories about McClain’s exploits as a behind-the-scenes player despite his role as a contract lobbyist for ComEd and other major companies with special interests in Springfield.
In 2013, for example, Rita explained how Madigan privately told Rita he would be in charge of the high-profile legislation to expand gambling in Illinois, a task that eventually led to Chicago getting the greenlight to build a land-based mega-casino. As soon as Madigan finished assigning the bill’s sponsorship to Rita, the speaker opened the door to his Capitol office and McClain materialized on the spot.
The speaker, who said he had a conflict of interest on the gambling bill, then told Rita that McClain would provide guidance.
Three years later, as Rita oversaw a major utility package backed by ComEd, he suddenly learned of a last-minute amendment in a committee, a proposal he was inclined to turn down because he knew nothing about its impact on the overall bill.
But Rita told jurors his opposition to the amendment evaporated when McClain “talked to me when the hearing was going on” and assured him that the amendment “would be OK.”
“Mike McClain wouldn’t give me advice that would be adverse to what the speaker would want,” Rita said.
Rita’s remark under oath provided jurors with a glimpse of how lawmakers viewed the Madigan-McClain alliance and the speaker’s potential wide influence over a bill’s outcome even when he did not cast a vote in favor or against a proposal.
In fact, Madigan was recorded as “not voting” on the final roll call when the overall utility bill passed.
In the Mapes trial, Rita did not deliver the dramatic line that he gave months earlier in the ComEd Four trial, where he testified that Madigan ruled the House “through fear and intimidation.”
But Rita did give jurors a moment almost as memorable, when he told how Mapes underscored his well-known gatekeeper role in the House by posting a sign near his desk that borrowed a line from the classic movie “The Wizard of Oz,” a line that visitors recalled vividly:
“Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.”
“Who in the analogy did you understand the wizard to be?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz.
“Madigan,” Rita answered.
More political intrigue came from witness Tom Cullen, a former Madigan staffer once in charge of running the speaker’s government-based issues development team and playing a major political role in Madigan retaking control of the House in the mid-1990s after Republicans won the majority for a single, two-year term, the only interruption in the speaker’s nationwide record of 36 years in charge of a legislative chamber.
Like Rita, Cullen told jurors he received a “nontarget” letter from the federal government, an assurance that prosecutors were not seeking to charge them.
[ Former top Michael Madigan aide on trial: What you need to know — and what’s next for Tim Mapes ]
Cullen emerged in the government’s probe of Madigan and AT&T Illinois.
The Tribune first revealed that Cullen and his lobbying firm allegedly were involved as an intermediary in a scheme by the telephone giant to funnel thousands of dollars from the company to former Chicago Rep. Eddie Acevedo, once a member of Madigan’s House Democratic leadership team who was starting up his own lobbying business.
The company allegedly hoped sending money through an intermediary would help gain the speaker’s assistance in passing telephone legislation he previously blocked.
The former president of AT&T Illinois, Paul La Schiazza, faces conspiracy and bribery charges arising from the case and has pleaded not guilty.
Acevedo has since served a brief stint in prison on an unrelated tax case.
AT&T entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office related the company’s efforts to influence Madigan. In exchange for admitting guilt, cooperating and paying a $23 million fine, a bribery-related charge eventually will be dropped.
Similarly, ComEd paid a $200 million fine in its own deferred prosecution agreement, in which it admitted orchestrating a “yearslong bribery scheme” involving jobs, contracts and payments to allies of Madigan. A bribery charge against the company was dismissed last month, part of the agreement for its cooperation.
So far in the Mapes trial, his lawyers have indicated they will present a series of counterarguments for the jury to buttress the position that the defendant was scrupulously honest.
In cross-examining Brendan O’Leary, formerly the FBI’s public corruption point man in Chicago, the defense lawyers tried to make out McClain as unreliable, previewing a likely argument that, even though Mapes heard McClain say he had assignments from Madigan, Mapes couldn’t be certain that was true when responding to grand jury questions.
Defense attorney Andrew Porter showed O’Leary transcripts of wiretapped conversations in which McClain made wild claims. Porter said, according to transcripts, McClain speculated that then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, Madigan’s Republican nemesis, might pay up to $100,000 in exchange for a report that made Madigan look bad.
Afternoon Briefing
Weekdays
Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.
And over and over, Porter sought to distance Mapes from the rest of the people tangled up in the feds’ Springfield corruption allegations. Mapes was not charged in the ComEd Four case, nor was he included in the racketeering indictment alongside Madigan and McClain, Porter noted during his cross-examination of O’Leary.
Obtaining a perjury conviction relies on convincing jurors that someone deliberately lied. And Diane MacArthur, another prosecutor handling the Mapes trial, has experience in winning high-profile perjury cases.
Two decades ago, MacArthur successfully prosecuted a man who lied to grand jurors about slipping a handcuff key to a federal detainee who then killed two officers in an attempt to escape the courthouse. He received a whopping 20-year prison sentence.
When MacArthur delivered her opening statement in the Mapes trial last week, she gave jurors a simple but direct message:
“Truth matters.”
