Crime & Law
Madigan Ally, Confidant Michael McClain Gets 2 Years in Prison Following ComEd Bribery Conspiracy
(WTTW News)
A “henchman.” A “soldier.” A “double agent” and a “messenger.” Michael McClain has received an array of colorful nicknames across various criminal trials and proceedings in recent years.
But after his sentencing, the former Illinois representative and lobbyist for Commonwealth Edison will likely soon have a new title: federal inmate.
McClain, who long served as the right-hand man and confidant of ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, was sentenced to two years in prison following his conviction in a yearslong conspiracy to bribe his former friend and ally.
“You preferred secrecy and lies. You preferred Mr. Madigan,” U.S. District Judge Manish Shah said in handing down the sentence Thursday afternoon. “You chose his way, and the consequences of that choice are yours to bear.”
McClain, 77, and three codefendants — former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, ex-ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and former contract lobbyist Jay Doherty — were each convicted of bribery conspiracy and willfully falsifying the utility company’s books in the 2023 “ComEd Four” trial.
The four did so by arranging for ComEd to pay $1.3 million to Madigan allies who were hired as subcontractors, but who actually did little or no work for the utility company. Rather than paying them directly, prosecutors said, Hooker and others arranged for them to be paid through an intermediary — Doherty — in an effort to conceal the payments.
While the feds had initially pushed for a 70-month prison sentence for McClain, they backed off that request Thursday, citing McClain's age and serious medical conditions. They instead recommended a 36-month prison term.
Defense attorney Patrick Cotter said Thursday his client requires numerous medications daily and that his life would be put at risk by any term of incarceration.
Shah said he took those health concerns into consideration in deciding on the sentence.
Prosecutors said it was McClain and Hooker who created that pathway through a plot they claimed was “illegal to its core.” McClain, whose words and voice were presented at trial through numerous emails and secretly recorded phone calls, was “unrelenting” in his efforts to secure jobs and payments for Madigan allies, according to prosecutors.
“McClain threatened repercussions from Madigan if ComEd did not comply,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
But McClain’s defense team at trial argued these were simply good lobbying tactics executed by a longtime veteran of the Springfield political scene who’d spent decades maintaining a close relationship with the most powerful politician in the state.
Cotter said McClain never intended to bribe Madigan, because he never thought he was trading jobs for official action. He described his client as a relic from a bygone era in Springfield when “trying to get on the good side of politicians, with trying to help their recommendations get jobs, was acceptable.”
“It was the way things were done there for decades,” Cotter said, “maybe hundreds of years.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur rejected that notion, saying this wasn’t the difference between an older world and a modern one, but rather this was “the world Mike McClain created for himself.”
Through his close ties with the speaker, MacArthur said McClain held one of the “keys to Madigan’s kingdom” — which made him valuable both to Madigan and to ComEd. Both sides utilized McClain as their “man in the middle,” she said, so they could each receive what they wanted from the other.
But while he was working for ComEd, MacArthur said McClain always remained “absolutely loyal” to Madigan.
“Mr. McClain put Madigan’s demands above all else,” she said, “including the law.”
Cotter also claimed federal investigators approached McClain prior to the trial and attempted to flip him into testifying against his codefendants but he refused to cooperate. He said his client has since paid a massive price for decision — including the loss of his home, life savings and the destruction of a public reputation he spent 40 years building.
“Mike believed that he stayed on the right side of the law. He understood there was a line and he thought he was on the right side of it,” Cotter told Shah. “Mike cannot say what the government wants to hear, because he does not think it is true.”
In handing down the sentence Thursday, Shah made reference to some of those “bagman” and “henchman” nicknames McClain had earned over the course of his legal proceedings. Shah called those titles “crude,” but added that they do “convey a sense of your role here.”
“There’s no one like you,” Shah said. “As Ms. MacArthur put it, you have the keys to the kingdom.”
McClain becomes the third of the four to be sentenced to prison. Hooker and Pramaggiore have already been sentenced to 18 and 24 months in prison, respectively. Doherty is scheduled to be sentenced early next month.
Madigan was convicted at a separate trial earlier this year and has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Though McClain was also a co-defendant in that trial, the jury deadlocked on the six counts he faced.
McClain is expected to begin serving his sentence Oct. 30.
