When then-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore was promoted to be the top executive of the utility’s parent company in 2018, her first call was to House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Soon after giving the speaker the happy news, which was not yet public, Pramaggiore called one of Madigan’s longtime confidants, former ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain, according to a recording of the call played for jurors in the “ComEd Four” bribery trial Monday.
Pramaggiore told McClain on the May 8, 2018, call that her promotion to Exelon Utilities “never would have happened without you and John (Hooker) and the speaker.”
“You’ve been my spirit guides and more on that,” Pramaggiore told McClain, who at the time was waiting outside Madigan’s office at the Capitol while the speaker was meeting with Gov. Bruce Rauner.
“Well we love ya,” McClain responded. “…I’m so proud of you.”
Weeks later, McClain and Hooker, also a longtime ComEd lobbyist, were secretly recorded by the FBI talking about Pramaggiore’s move to the big time at Exelon.
“When we pulled up, we had the little jet,” Hooker said on the call, laughing. “She had the big Exelon jet. The big one you can stand up in.”
The grandeur of Exelon’s private jet also caught the fancy of Madigan, who joked with McClain on another recorded call that he might want to go back to work for a power company later in life, “because the plane that Anne rides in? You could serve the president of the United States in the thing.”
Later in that same conversation, McClain told Madigan that he was pleased the speaker and Pramaggiore had developed such a friendly relationship. The “domino effect,” McClain said, started when they took a trip to Turkey together.
The calls, which were played at the outset of the trial’s eighth day on Monday, marked the first time that Pramaggiore’s voice has been heard in the dozens of secret recordings made by investigators.
Later Monday, prosecutors are expected to call their star witness, former ComEd Vice President Fidel Marquez, who cooperated with the government after he was confronted in January 2019 and secretly recorded phone calls and videotaped in-person meetings with the defendants.
Charged in the case are McClain, Pramaggiore, Hooker, and Jay Doherty, who was a consultant and lobbyist for ComEd and the ex-president of the City Club of Chicago.
The indictment alleged ComEd poured $1.3 million into payments funneled to ghost “subcontractors” who were Madigan’s associates, put a Madigan-backed candidate on the ComEd board, and gave coveted internships to families in his 13th Ward, all part of an elaborate scheme to keep the speaker happy and help the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.
Prosecutors also alleged that ComEd agreed to hire and then renew a contract for the Reyes Kurson law firm, headed by longtime Madigan associate Victor Reyescq, to curry favor with the speaker.
Madigan and McClain, meanwhile, are facing separate racketeering charges alleging an array of corrupt schemes, including the bribery plot by ComEd.
The defense has argued that what prosecutors say was bribery was actually nothing more than honest, legal political lobbying, and that there was no evidence Madigan did anything to directly help ComEd in exchange for benefits that flowed to his cronies.
Among the recordings prosecutors are signaling they want to use when Marquez takes the stand is a May 23, 2018, call between McClain and Marquez, who allegedly described how a female gas company executive was getting “pushed really hard” to hire someone at Madigan’s request and that Marquez told her to consider the hire. .
“Good, perfect,” McClain allegedly said, adding: “Well, not everyone likes getting the calls, right?”
“Yeah,” Marquez said, according to a motion filed Sunday by prosecutors. “I don’t know if, I don’t know that anybody likes it, but people need to understand, how, what’s behind all this.”
Marquez allegedly went over his conversation with the gas company worker, telling McClain: “I says, ‘That maybe one day you’ll have an ask and this will be remembered.”
“Right, exactly,” McClain allegedly said. “It all comes … around, right?”
Federal authorities alleged the conversation showed Marquez was recapping how he told the gas executive that it was important to hire people when asked to do so by Madigan.
Prosecutors said Marquez told the gas executive that the requested hire should be made “so that when you need to ask for official action in return, Madigan would oblige.”
Shortly after 5 p.m. the same day, McClain relayed the Marquez conversation with the gas company executive to Andrew Madigan, the ex-speaker’s son.
“I mean, that’s how the sys–this is, you can’t be offended with that,” McClain allegedly said to the younger Madigan. “Oh, so you got pressure too, are you kidding me?”
McClain allegedly said, “I just love these people that, they are in a regulatory body, right? And they are offended when people ask for favors.
“Hello? Dumb (expletive).”
McClain was also recorded saying, “That’s what happens when you do when you’re in this game. … Maybe some day you can ask for a favor,” according to prosecutors.
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Authorities described the recordings as illustrative of “pay-to-play,” the process “where businesses give benefits to public officials and their associates with the goal of receiving future official action in return.”
The prosecutors want to play the tapes in the trial because defense attorneys have aggressively sought to convince the jurors that defendants’ actions were not illegal.
For example, McClain’s attorney, Patrick Cotter, asked Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, if McClain ever suggested that the lawmaker should get involved in “making job recommendation as a strategy” to pass legislation?
Rita responded, “No.”
In his opening argument for McClain, prosecutors argued, Cotter said the activities under scrutiny represent “honest lobbying” and that “is exactly what happened in this case, that and nothing more.”
Cotter played down the Madigan allies’ jobs in question, saying they are the result of mere recommendations, prosecutors said.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
