Crime & Law
Madigan Driven by ‘Power, Profit,’ Used ComEd as ‘Personal Piggy Bank,’ Prosecutors Tell Jury in Closing Arguments of Corruption Case

Powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan organized a “stream of bribes” in order to enhance his own power and line his own pockets, federal prosecutors said in their final words to jurors before they begin deliberations in the landmark corruption case.
Closing statements officially got underway Wednesday afternoon, more than three months after the corruption trial of Madigan and his longtime friend and ally Michael McClain.
Speaking before a PowerPoint slide that included just two words — “POWER” and “PROFIT” — Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz began by telling jurors that those were the two things that allegedly drove Madigan, with the help of McClain, “to break the law time and again.”
She reminded the jury of Madigan’s immense power not only as speaker, where he could control which bills lived and died in the General Assembly, but also as chair of the Democratic party which gave him authority over campaign financing for other legislators.
According to Schwartz, Madigan repeatedly abused that power to organize bribes and help shower benefits on himself and his allies.
“Ladies and gentlemen, legislation should not be bought,” she said. “But that’s what was happening here. And Madigan knew that, because he and McClain set it up that way.”
Madigan and McClain face charges including racketeering conspiracy, federal program bribery and wire fraud. Madigan alone is also accused of attempted extortion. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Schwartz largely focused her arguments Wednesday on the conspiracy count against both men, which centers on the most substantial and sprawling of the alleged five alleged corruption schemes in this case wherein Madigan and McClain are accused of arranging subcontractor jobs for four of the former speaker’s associates with Commonwealth Edison.
The utility company allegedly paid those individuals — 13th Ward precinct captains Ray Nice and Ed Moody, and former Chicago Alds. Frank Olivo and Michael Zalewski — $1.3 million even as they did little or no work, in order to win over Madigan’s support on critical energy legislation in Springfield.
“They were ghosts,” Schwartz said of those subcontractors. “This whole arrangement was a sham.”
ComEd neared financial ruin in the early 2000s, Schwartz said, and the company had struggled to earn Madigan’s trust in order to help pass legislation that could help save it.
Company executives allegedly began conspiring to bribe Madigan and hoped to keep him happy so he would back their efforts to pass major legislation, including the Smart Grid bill in 2011 and the Future Energy Jobs Act, or FEJA, in 2016.
Schwartz claimed Madigan used ComEd as his “personal piggy bank” by using the company to pay his allies so he wouldn’t have to.
The subcontractors were paid through an intermediary, consultant Jay Doherty, rather than directly by ComEd.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz delivers closing arguments on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (WTTW News)
Schwartz on Wednesday played for jurors a clip from a wiretapped phone conversation between McClain and former ComEd executive John Hooker from February 2019 where the pair reminisced about how they set up that payment plan.
“We had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us … if you want to make a federal court suit, okay, but that’s how simple it is,” McClain said on the call.
McClain explained how they didn’t have to worry at all about if someone like Zalewski was actually working — that would be left up to Doherty, who was the one who appeared to be paying them on paper.
“That’s why we set it up like this, John,” McClain went on.
According to Schwartz, Zalewski was paid $45,000 from ComEd between 2018 and 2019, but he "didn’t do a lick of work for ComEd,” she said.
Doherty, Hooker, McClain and former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore were each convicted of conspiring to bribe Madigan in the 2023 “ComEd Four” trial.
In February 2019, when ComEd had considered changing up its lobbyist roster and potentially dropping some of the subcontractors, Pramaggiore said in a wiretapped call that she wanted to avoid any “disruptive battles where, you know, somebody gets their nose out of joint and we’re trying to move somebody off and then we’re forced to give ‘em a five-year contract because we’re in the middle of needing to get something done in Springfield.”
Schwartz said this is Pramaggiore connecting the Madigan subcontractors with ComEd’s legislative agenda in Springfield.
“Quid pro quo,” she said, “this for that.”
According to Schwartz, Madigan was looped in on this plan from day one and even if he initially thought the arrangement was “so out there, so wrong,” as he considered it more, “he thought it was great,” she said, because it gave them plausible deniability.
“The way they talk about this when they think no one is listening,” Schwartz said of the 2019 call, “that’s the truth, ladies and gentlemen.”
In a separate instance where Madigan had sought to help out the wife of another legislator who’d come looking for money, he suggested on a wiretapped phone call with McClain that they pay her through Doherty.
“He knew Doherty had been used to hide these sham contractors for years,” Schwartz said. “That’s concealment, that’s corrupt and it shows Madigan knows the corrupt nature of this conspiracy.”
On the witness stand earlier this month, Madigan testified he’d become “angry” when he eventually learned after the fact that his allies weren’t doing the work they were supposed to be doing under their ComEd contracts.
But prosecutors played a wiretapped conversation between him and McClain from 2018 in which Madigan can be heard laughing about how others had “made out like bandits.”
“Oh my God, for very little work, too,” McClain said on that call. “Very little work.”
Schwartz said Madigan’s laughter was “entirely inconsistent” with the concern and anger he said he’d felt.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “what you heard on the witness stand was a facade.”
ComEd also allegedly tried to bribe Madigan and remain in his good graces by offering annual internship slots to students from the 13th Ward, even if they didn’t always meet applicant requirements.
Prosecutors further alleged Madigan and McClain convinced ComEd to retain the law firm of Reyes Kurson because one of its partners, Victor Reyes, was “particularly valuable to Madigan’s political operation,” and ensured another Madigan ally, Juan Ochoa, would be appointed to ComEd’s board of directors, even as utility officials expressed concerns about the move.
Before closings began Wednesday, jurors heard two hours of instructions, which laid out the individual charges against Madigan and McClain and the process they must go through in order to determine their guilt or innocence.
Prosecutors are expected to finish their closing arguments Thursday, while Madigan and McClain will put forth their own closings later this week.