Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan exits the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Oct. 31, 2024. (Andrew Adams / Capitol News Illinois)

When Illinois state Rep. Eddie Acevedo began looking to leave politics ahead of his 2017 resignation, he reached out to Commonwealth Edison exec Fidel Marquez to see if he’d be interested in hiring him as a contract lobbyist.

But after dealing with Acevedo during his time as a legislator, Marquez saw Acevedo as “emotional,” “sloppy” and “very difficult to deal with” and had no interest in bringing him onboard.

“I didn't think he would make a good representative for Commonwealth Edison,” Marquez testified in federal court Wednesday.

A short time later, Marquez said he spoke with Michael McClain — a close friend and ally of then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — who said he would have a “daddy talk” with Acevedo about cleaning up his professional behavior and asked Marquez to hire the former state representative.

This time, Marquez said, he reconsidered because “it was Mike McClain asking me and I understood that request was coming from Mike Madigan.” Soon after, ComEd did hire Acevedo at a rate of $5,000 per month despite the fact that, according to Marquez, he did “little or no” work for the utility company.

Marquez’s testimony came Wednesday during his second day on the witness stand in Madigan and McClain’s ongoing racketeering and corruption trial. The former House speaker is alleged to have orchestrated multiple corruption schemes, wielding his significant political power to reward loyal allies and enrich himself.

The most substantial of those alleged schemes involved utility giant ComEd as prosecutors have claimed Madigan and McClain arranged subcontractor jobs for several of the speaker’s allies — including 13th Ward precinct captains Ray Nice and Ed Moody, and former Chicago Alds. Frank Olivo and Michael Zalewski — with the company even as they did little or no work.

In exchange, prosecutors allege, Madigan supported critical energy legislation in Springfield that benefitted ComEd.

Already McClain and three other ComEd-connected officials — ex-CEO Anne Pramaggiore, John Hooker and Jay Doherty — have been convicted of conspiring to bribe Madigan.

Marquez, who worked closely with those four while serving as ComEd’s vice president of government affairs, began cooperating with the government in early 2019 when federal investigators presented him with recordings of wiretapped phone calls detailing his own involvement in the alleged plot.

According to Marquez, he and the other ComEd officials had arranged to pay those subcontractors through intermediaries, including Doherty, in order to conceal the fact that they were being paid by the utility company to do essentially no work.

Marquez, who previously pleaded guilty to a bribery charge but is expected to escape any prison time, told jurors Tuesday that he hadn’t given “any direction” to Doherty about any work Moody, Olivo or Nice should be doing on ComEd’s behalf.

When asked why, he replied: “I didn’t expect them to do any work for ComEd as they were being paid as a favor to Mike Madigan.”

Marquez on Tuesday also testified that ComEd leaders, including himself, agreed to the contracts to appease Madigan “in order for him to be more positively disposed toward ComEd’s legislative agenda.”

Wednesday’s testimony centered on the hiring of Acevedo and Zalewski.

In a May 16, 2018, call played for jurors, McClain and Pramaggiore discussed bringing on Zalewski, as Pramaggiore told McClain she had told Marquez to “get it done.” But on the same call, she asked if there was anyone else ComEd could potentially “take off the roster.”

Pramaggiore was set to begin a new role the following month, moving on to become CEO of ComEd’s parent company Exelon. But Marquez told jurors he and Pramaggiore were concerned about her successor, former federal prosecutor Joe Dominguez, seeing the payments being made to the Madigan subcontractors.

McClain later told Marquez during a Dec. 5, 2018, phone call that he could take Acevedo off ComEd’s payroll. Marquez told jurors this had been a “perennial” question he’d had for McClain because he was still concerned about Acevedo’s behavior and the fact he was doing “no work.”

On that call, Marquez asked McClain whether Acevedo was “gonna go screaming to our friend anyway” — a reference to Madigan — but McClain informed him that would not happen “no matter what.”

Acevedo, who was not charged in connection with this case but pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2021, is also connected to another alleged scheme in the Madigan trial involving AT&T Illinois.

Prosecutors have alleged that between 2017 and 2018, Madigan and McClain were also working to solicit bribes from the phone company by arranging for AT&T to indirectly pay Acevedo $22,500 over nine months, though Acevedo did no actual work for the company.

Jurors for the first time Wednesday watched undercover videos recorded by Marquez shortly after he began cooperating with the government.

Marquez said he was first approached by FBI agents on Jan. 16, 2019. The very next day, he called Doherty to question him about which subcontractors were being paid through him, as Marquez said he would need to explain that deal to Dominguez.

On that call, which was recorded and played for jurors Wednesday, Doherty confirmed that he was paying Olivo, Nice and Zalewski before adding that the “only people who even know about this are you and perhaps Anne (Pramaggiore) … John Hooker and me.”

"I have never, ever, ever said a word as per conversation way back when," Doherty told Marquez on the call.

Marquez subsequently recorded conversations with McClain and Hooker, who told Marquez during a restaurant sit-down that he had “created” the subcontractor arrangement and had to explain it to former ComEd CEO Frank Clark.

In another video recorded in February 2019 at Saputo’s restaurant in Springfield, Marquez told McClain, “I don’t know how (Dominguez is) going to react. I just don’t think he’ll react well.”

McClain can be heard advising Marquez during that conversation “don’t put anything in writing” about the subcontractors and that these hirings were done as a “favor.”

Asked in court Wednesday what he thought that meant, Marquez testified that Olivo, Nice and Zalewski were “hired as a favor to Michael Madigan.”

The videos presented in court Wednesday were previously used as evidence when Marquez testified in the “ComEd Four” trial last year.

Marquez recorded another one-on-one conversation he had with Doherty on Feb. 13, 2019 about the subcontractors in which he asked “Do they do anything or what do they do? What do you have them doing?”

Doherty replied: “Not much.” He then warned Marquez that he wouldn’t “tinker” with the specifics of the contract.

“My bottom line advice would be, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with those guys,” Doherty said in the recording, adding that the subcontractors "keep their mouth(s) shut.”

“But do they do anything for me on a day-to-day basis?” Doherty continued? “No.”

Days later, Marquez recorded another conversation about the Doherty contract with Pramaggiore in February 2019, in which she told him that the “problem” with telling Dominguez about the subcontractor situation is that Dominguez would “do a victory lap" because he'd have "another thing on” her.

“I’m just so tired of him, you know,” Pramaggiore told Marquez on the call, “Everything’s either a mess I made that he’s gotta clean up or, you know. I mean, he’s just, he’s a very insecure person.”

Pramaggiore also told Marquez he should inform Dominguez about the subcontractors, but that they should wait to make any changes to that contract until after that year’s legislative session had ended.

Marquez testified that this was because ComEd at the time was looking for a bill to extend that formula rate and he believed they wanted to avoid angering Madigan by messing with the subcontractor payments.

Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report.