Prosecutors begin presenting ComEd evidence as Madigan trial runs behind schedule in Chicago

CHICAGO — A ComEd vice president testified Wednesday in the corruption trial of former House Speaker Michael Madigan that the utility giant was in severe financial straits leading up to its all-out effort to gain support in Springfield for two major pieces of legislation that brought the company from the brink of bankruptcy.

Their financial condition was “dire” before they managed to get key bills passed in 2011 and 2016, Scott Vogt told jurors. And Madigan was crucial to getting those bills through the House, he said.

“He controlled to a large degree what bills were going to make it to the floor, make it to committee,” Vogt said.

Madigan’s trial is now running more than a day behind schedule after an unexpectedly long and contentious cross-examination of a former legislator. Prosecutors had expected to play the first of nearly 200 wiretapped conversations Wednesday as well as put former state Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie on the stand. Instead, Lang spent much of the day waiting down the hall from the courtroom. He is now expected to testify Thursday.

Madigan, 82, of Chicago, 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 co-defendant Michael McClain, 77, a former ComEd lobbyist from downstate Quincy, have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The indictment against Madigan alleges that ComEd’s scheme to win over the speaker’s support began right around the time of the Smart Grid bill’s passage in 2011.

That year, ComEd hired Madigan ally Victor Reyes’ law firm and also began paying newly retired 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo as a lobbyist. The utility allegedly began funneling more payments to Olivo as a do-nothing subcontractor two years later, according to the indictment.

Continuing his testimony Wednesday was Scott Drury, a Highwood Democrat and onetime federal prosecutor, who had begun his testimony Tuesday telling jurors about the inner workings of the Illinois General Assembly, how bills move through the House, and the rules and machinations that gave Madigan so much power.

Drury told the jury he wound up on Madigan’s bad side after refusing to take Democratic Party of Illinois money in a reelection bid and later becoming the only member of the Democratic caucus not to vote for him to remain speaker. Eventually, Drury said, tensions between him and Madigan rose to the point where Drury considered running for House speaker himself, and at the beginning of Drury’s third term he did not vote for Madigan to retain that office. After that, Drury said, he couldn’t remember getting a single bill passed.

But Madigan attorney Todd Pugh, during cross-examination, showed Drury evidence that he did in fact sponsor at least four bills that passed the House during his third term, and that it did not appear from the record that Madigan made any effort to block them.

Drury was hardly a crucial witness, but as his cross-examination continued Wednesday, Madigan’s attorneys combed over nearly every detail of his testimony. They dug up examples of Drury’s successful legislation, and repeatedly tried to confront him with his prior statements about specific moments in time in the General Assembly, including whether or not Madigan was greeted with cheers at the Democratic caucus in 2013.

In response, Drury was often nitpicky and bordering on evasive. At one point, he took a particularly long pause to answer whether he had spoken with prosecutors this week. “I’m only going back a couple days here,” Madigan attorney Todd Pugh said, on the edge of exasperation. After the lengthy cross-examination, prosecutors questioned Drury again, and he re-emphasized that as he began to more assertively oppose Madigan, he and his legislation were increasingly frozen out.

He also acknowledged on redirect that two House bills he introduced had passed the House but explained both died in the Senate. Then-Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, picked up sponsorship in the upper chamber, effectively giving him control of the bills’ fate. Drury testified Jones “never talked to me” about the bills but was cut off before he could elaborate.

The maneuver, sometimes viewed as a hostile takeover of a bill, occasionally happens in Springfield when a lawmaker in one chamber grabs sponsorship of a bill that passed another chamber simply in order to kill the legislation.

The trial got underway in earnest with opening statements this week. In his opening remarks to the jury Tuesday, McClain lawyer John Mitchell said prosecutors were trying to criminalize legal lobbying and the relationship-building at the heart of the state’s politics. “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.”

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