U.S. District Court Judge John F. Kness granted federal prosecutors’ request to hold an evidentiary hearing about whether the former alderperson is healthy enough to stand trial.

On a warm Tuesday evening in late June 2019, state Sen. Emil Jones III walked out onto the patio at a suburban steakhouse and into an hourslong dinner that would set the table for alleged bribes.

Emil Jones III has remained in office since his September 2022 indictment on three counts including bribery and lying to the FBI, even winning another four-year term in an unopposed race six weeks after being charged.

Federal prosecutors want the judge to hold an evidentiary hearing before deciding whether ex-Ald. Carrie Austin, 75, is too ill to stand trial.

In a statement, Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the verdict an “important message to anyone in government” that “if you choose corruption you will be found out, and you will be punished.”

“I support President Trump in many ways,” state Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said, “but I don’t think he understands that this just signals that the corruption in Illinois is just accepted, rather than it has to stop.”

Michael Madigan’s defense team rested Thursday, nearly three months after opening statements and testimony began in the landmark case. Here is what you need to know about the case.

Michael Madigan’s defense team officially rested Thursday morning, nearly three months after opening statements and testimony began in the landmark case.

Rita Crundwell infamously charted a new chapter in Illinois’ storied corruption saga by committing what the FBI believes to be the largest theft of public funds in U.S. history. She’s among the 1,500 “non-violent offenders” whose sentence was commuted Thursday by President Joe Biden, in the nation’s largest single-day act of clemency.

A federal judge has rejected a motion for acquittal from former AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza, whose alleged efforts to bribe Michael Madigan are now being laid out for jurors in the ex-House speaker’s ongoing corruption trial.

Solis’ undercover work helped bring down two of Illinois’ biggest and longest-serving Democratic powerbrokers. Former Chicago Ald. Ed Burke is now serving a two-year prison sentence after his bribery, racketeering and extortion convictions last December, while the corruption trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is in its seventh week of testimony. 

The longtime 25th Ward alderperson, who is testifying under a deferred prosecution agreement, marks the most substantial witness in the government's case against the former House Speaker. He is expected to testify for several days.

District Judge John Blakey on Wednesday denied a defense motion seeking to toss out a handful of charges, including bribery counts, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling narrowed the federal bribery statute — known as “section 666” — in a ruling earlier this year.

Former Ald. Ed Burke is in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at Federal Correctional Institution Thomson in Thomson, Illinois, nearly 150 miles west of his beloved hometown. He will begin his two-year prison sentence.

After nearly 15 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury’s foreperson told U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman that she was “absolutely positive” she and her fellow jurors could not find a way out of their stalemate.

It’s up to a jury to decide whether Paul La Schiazza, who retired from AT&T in 2019, intended that contract as a bribe to then House Speaker Michael Madigan in order to ensure the passage of AT&T’s prized legislation, as the feds have alleged.