Michael Madigan spoke with confidant about helping lobbyist find work with gaming industry, affidavit alleges

It’s no secret that Michael Madigan, the indicted ex-speaker of the Illinois House, for years generated a conga line of Democratic staffers and others who toiled in the legislative arena and then cashed in as lobbyists.

But it was rare to ever catch Madigan allegedly playing matchmaker.

Now a recently unsealed federal court filing has documented a secret federal recording of Madigan allegedly talking about connecting a lobbyist looking for work to one of the cash cows of the state’s lobbying interests — the gambling industry.

In May 2018, federal authorities intercepted a call Madigan made to Michael McClain, a longtime lobbyist for Commonwealth Edison and other clients who was indicted with Madigan on racketeering conspiracy charges in March, according to a search warrant affidavit unsealed in U.S. District Court in Springfield on Friday.

“You were saying the gaming companies might be in the market to hire people?” Madigan asked McClain on the call, which was recorded via an FBI wiretap on McClain’s cell phone.

The speaker then named a person who “was just in to see me looking for work.” The person’s name was blacked out by the U.S. attorney’s office before the document was unsealed.

McClain, one of Madigan’s closest confidants who’d kept his hand in the speaker’s political operations even after retiring as a lobbyist, had a one-word response: OK.

“That’s all,” Madigan said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

That conversation was described in a footnote to another recorded call McClain had six days earlier with Fidel Marquez, the then-vice president of external affairs for ComEd who was secretly cooperating with federal investigators in an ongoing bribery probe.

McClain and Marquez were talking through a list of payments that had allegedly been made by ComEd, at Madigan and McClain’s instruction, to various members of the speaker’s political organization.

“Let me just tell you about each guy as you go through them,” McClain told Marquez, according to the affidavit. “So (name redacted) he’s one of the top three precinct captains and he also trains people how to go door to door, so just to give you an idea of how important the guy is.”

After Marquez names another person on the payroll — whose identity was also blacked out in the affidavit — McClain replied, “Former alderman.”

The two also spoke about someone in line to possibly become the Cook County Recorder of Deeds — an apparent reference to , a longtime Madigan loyalist and one of his top precinct workers.

“It’s a funny business up here,” McClain said about Chicago-area politics.

Marquez then mentioned a new name — also blacked out in the court paperwork — that prompts McClain to say, “I gotta talk to M- somebody (Madigan) about that. Let me talk about that.”

That comment is punctuated by the footnote about Madigan and McClain talking about getting the same person work as a lobbyist for gambling interests.

The General Assembly approved a major expansion of gambling in 2019, the year after the Madigan-McClain call cited in the affidavit. The document does not explain in any further detail whether the person Madigan discussed wound up getting lobbying work with the gaming industry.

Yet Madigan’s long history of helping friends and political allies find jobs is a nod to his days as a loyal disciple of Mayor Richard J. Daley, the man who perfected the patronage politics of the once-mighty Chicago Democratic machine and was a mentor to Madigan before he started a nationwide record 36-year run as speaker.

Madigan, 80, dethroned from the speakership in January 2021, was indicted in March by a federal grand jury on racketeering charges alleging his elected office and political operation were a criminal enterprise that provided personal financial rewards for him and his associates.

Also charged was McClain, 74, of downstate Quincy, who is a former legislator and lobbyist whose connections to Madigan go back to their time in the General Assembly together in the 1970s.

McClain is also facing a separate indictment with ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and two others alleging they orchestrated a scheme to funnel jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from ComEd to Madigan-approved consultants.

Madigan and McClain have pleaded not guilty.

The newly released affidavit, which was dated May 2019, did not allege any wrongdoing involving the gambling industry, and there is no mention in the indictment against Madigan and McClain of their alleged conversation about connecting the lobbyist with gaming companies.

The document also included an intriguing comment attributed to Marquez, who pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy and is expected to be a star witness for prosecutors at McClain’s trial in September on the ComEd charges.

According to the affidavit, Marquez told federal agents during debriefings in 2019 that while the team at ComEd was aware it was important not to “draw the ire” of the powerful speaker, he was not aware of any obvious action by Madigan “to defeat or advance a bill ComEd either opposed or supported, respectively.”

Marquez, however, did say he would contact McClain and ask whether Madigan would care if Marquez took steps to defeat a bill, such as the time that ComEd “took the gloves off” because it was far from enamored by a bill supported by then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan, the speaker’s daughter, according to the FBI affidavit.

In another interview in January 2019, Marquez recounted to federal authorities that ComEd was responsive to the requests of politicians, including the hiring of political associates as sub-contractors and that the utility does so to “maintain relations” with the politicians, the document said.

In fact, Marquez said he “did not believe that it was right to do so,” the affidavit said, but that “was the way things are done in Illinois.”

Marquez told federal authorities that Pramaggiore, who is set to go on trial with McClain in a little over three months, “never explained in detail the reason why honoring the hiring requests from Madigan were important; however, Marquez understood that ComEd derived a benefit in terms of legislation,” the affidavit said.

The Madigan call to McClain about matching up a lobbyist with gambling work is yet another example of how the federal investigation has lifted the veil on the famously cautious speaker, who was dethroned last year as the federal investigation was intensifying around him.

Kent Redfield, a political science professor emeritus, said having a powerful politician like Madigan casually offering to help out a lobbyist can be a “little disheartening, disillusional” to the average citizens expecting their lawmakers to be focused on the bigger issues of the day.

Redfield, a longtime political analyst at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said Madigan’s matchmaking effort reflects the business-as-usual culture of patronage-style politics practiced in Illinois.

The example noted in the affidavit may not be the most high-profile pitch made by Madigan, the 13th Ward committeeman since 1969, particularly given his patronage prowess was so prolific that a city of Chicago agency was once dubbed “Madigan Electric.”

But the ComEd investigation was the first in Madigan’s decades long reign to actually charge him with crossing the legal line.

As part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office, ComEd admitted adding Madigan cronies to its payroll, hiring numerous summer interns from the 13th Ward, and installing a Madigan-backed candidate on the company’s board of directors, all in an attempt to win the speaker’s support for legislation in Springfield. As part of the deal, ComEd has paid a record $200 fine and agreed to cooperate in exchange for bribery charges being dropped in 2023.

Madigan, meanwhile, has vigorously defended making job recommendations, both before and after his indictment. Not only is “helping people find jobs not a crime,” Madigan wrote in 2020 to a legislative panel, it’s not even “ethically improper” for politicians to make job recommendations.

“To the contrary, I believe that it is part of my duties as a community and political leader to help good people find work — from potential executives to college interns, and more,” wrote Madigan. “What an employer chooses to do with that recommendation rests solely with their discretion.”

rlong@chicagotribune.com

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com