CHICAGO — A lawyer for ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan’s longtime confidant told a federal jury Tuesday that the allegations of bribery and corruption against the pair attempt to criminalize legal lobbying and relationship building at the center of the state’s politics.

“The evidence will show Mike McClain was a lobbyist, and like all lobbyists, (he) understood if you want to get access to a politician you need to develop a relationship of trust,” defense attorney John Mitchell told the jury in his opening statement.

Mitchell likened lobbying to sales, saying it’s all about the “hope” of getting a meeting, having that relationship. Bribery, he said, is an exchange, an envelope of cash for a vote.

“A good lobbyist builds good positive relationships with elected officials,” Mitchell said. “If you don’t have access to a politician, you have no hope of convincing them.”

He said McClain did “perfectly 100% legal favors for Mike Madigan” for the purpose of “building trust and maintaining and increasing access to Mike Madigan.”

The government’s view of the evidence “is just wrong,” Mitchell told jurors.

“They were so focused on Mike Madigan that they missed it,” he said. “He did not act with an attempt to bribe Mike Madigan or help him obtain bribes. … He is 100% innocent.”

“There is an old saying if you walk around all day carrying a hammer you are eventually going to find something that looks like a nail,” Mitchell said. “The government wrongly concluded that Mike Madigan is powerful, and therefore he must be corrupt.”

Madigan, 82, who served for decades as speaker of the Illinois House and the head of the state Democratic Party, faces racketeering charges alleging he ran his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise, scheming with utility giants ComEd and AT&T to put his cronies on contracts requiring little or no work and using his public position to drum up business for his private law firm.

Both Madigan and McClain, 77, a former ComEd lobbyist, have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors, not surprisingly, have painted a much different picture, telling the jury in their opening statement Monday that Madigan ruthlessly used his perch at the very top of state politics to betray the public trust, increase his power, enrich his friends and line his own pockets.

“Madigan abused his power and used the organization he led to engage in a pattern of corrupt conduct over and over and over again,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker told jurors.

Alongside Madigan, Streicker said, was McClain, his longtime friend and political ally, who “shielded Madigan, disguising Madigan’s involvement in corrupt activity.”

“Together the defendants engaged in a campaign of bribery,” she said. “A campaign of bribery through which they seized opportunities to leverage Madigan’s immense power in Illinois government to seek and accept bribes from people who needed something from the government. … This racket went on for years.”

Prosecutors’ first witness was former state Rep. Carol Sente, a Vernon Hills Democrat who gave jurors a basic overview of Illinois legislative procedure and Madigan’s power over the fate of legislation.

Sente also was among the first witnesses called in the “ComEd Four” case last year.

Madigan met with Sente personally before she took office so he could determine whether she would be a fit for the job, she said. Every time he was up for re-election as speaker, he called her personally to ask for her support and for his all-important rules that control the chamber.

While he at first assured Sente she could always vote in ways that were best for her district, she soon learned once she took office that the speaker had specific ideas of how representatives should, passing out “watch charts” with vote recommendations, particularly for lawmakers in the most competitive, “target” districts like hers.

She said Madigan’s issues director, Will Cousineau, told her “you need to follow the watch chart exactly.” And she explained that when she didn’t want to go along with the watch chart that the conversation would be “rather unfriendly.” She said she ended up talking to Madigan one-on-one about five to seven times about her votes.

She went into detail about how Madigan could kill bills in the powerful House Rules Committee, where loyal lawmakers followed the speaker’s orders to move bills forward for full hearings or to bury them.

Two of Sente’s bills regarding mortgage lending stalled in the Rules Committee despite her repeated efforts to urge him to bring the bills up for a vote. She explained how she talked to Madigan three times in 2011, but the conversations “escalated in nature.” She said she eventually approached Madigan on the House floor, and he bluntly told her: “‘I don’t want to talk about that bill again,’ and he said 'it’s not moving forward.'”

But when she sponsored legislation to impose term limits that included 14 years on legislative leaders like the speaker, Madigan requested a meeting, she said.

She proposed legislation that was not retroactive – meaning Madigan could serve another 14 years as speaker – and that Madigan’s prior decades as speaker would not prohibit him from serving any longer as head of the House.

Sente said their private meeting in his Capitol suite lasted about five minutes.

“He had a sheet of paper that was a bill summary of that bill,” she testified. “He pushed it across to me and asked if I could explain why I was filing that.”

When Sente explained she was a “strong proponent” of turnover in leadership, Madigan responded that “it takes a long time” to get organized, Sente said.

“I said, ‘35 years?’” Sente testified. “Shortly thereafter, the meeting was over.”

On cross-examination, Madigan attorney Daniel Collins sought to display the speaker as hardworking and polite, not controlling or all-powerful.

Sente conceded that not every bill Madigan opposed would die in committee, including Sente’s “smoke-free campus” legislation which Madigan voted against but was signed into law anyway. She also noted that she very rarely saw him become visibly upset.

“He does not yell,” Sente said, and appeared to smile in Madigan’s direction. Madigan smiled in return.

Sente also acknowledged on cross examination that she introduced the term-limit bill at the suggestion of a Madigan staffer and that it polished her image as an independent voice.

Collins also pushed back on her testimony about her predatory lending bills that she said were blocked by Madigan. In fact, Madigan had championed a 2003 law that banned a variety of deceptive practices, including giving loans to people who could not afford to pay them back, she acknowledged.

At the core of the prosecution evidence are hundreds of wiretapped recordings of McClain’s phone as well as undercover videos made by secret cooperators, such as former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez and then-Alderperson Daniel Solis.

Mitchell told the jury that despite all the secret recordings, there is no evidence that ComEd ever agreed to give Madigan anything in exchange for his help passing any legislation — which would cross the line from legal favors to bribery.

“You would think if there was an exchange there would be something on there, something hinting of an exchange,” Mitchell said.

He also took aim at Solis and his unprecedented deferred prosecution deal with the U.S. attorney’s office, telling the jury that in Solis, “You’re going to see what a real criminal looks like.”

Solis stole hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign funds, Mitchell said. He received bribes including cash, Viagra and prostitutes. He lied to his own wife and family. And in exchange for his cooperation, “he will get a free pass.”

“Instead of federal prison, Solis now vacations to tropical islands,” Mitchell said, reading words from a slide he put up on monitors in the courtroom. He said Solis can’t be trusted with anything.

“Not something small, not something large, and certainly not something as important as a federal corruption case,” he said.

Madigan’s attorneys, meanwhile, described the Democratic stalwart as a soft-spoken, nonconfrontational Southwest Side guy trying to advance his party’s blue-collar agenda.

Decrying the government’s cooperating witnesses as liars with an “ax to grind” who were operating without the speaker’s knowledge or authorization, attorney Tom Breen urged jurors to focus on what Madigan’s intentions were, “not what somebody else says” on some 200 wiretapped audio and video recordings that will dominate the 11-week trial.

What they’ll find, Breen said, is a man trying to provide jobs and opportunities for his constituents following in the footsteps of his father, a 13th Ward superintendent.

“What you will see is that his intention, like his daddy taught him, was to protect the Democratic agenda. The working stiff,” Breen said. He said that while others may have been scheming behind Madigan’s back, “He doesn’t act that way.”

“He has never made a demand on anybody,” Breen said, at one point slapping the lectern for effect. “If someone says he did, that’s bull. That’s just bull.”

The jury of eight women and four men is expected to start hearing evidence after Mitchell’s opening statement.

The next witness after Sente is expected to be Scott Drury, another former state representative who will give the jury an overview of how the General Assembly in Springfield works and why Madigan wielded so much power and influence over legislation.

Also on the witness list for Tuesday is former state Rep. Lou Lang, a then-Madigan ally who was forced to step down in 2018 by Madigan, allegedly with McClain’s help, after word had begun circulating that a woman was threatening to go public with an allegation of sexual harassment.

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