CHICAGO — A real estate developer at the center of an alleged attempted extortion scheme by ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan testified Thursday that he never felt intimidated or pressured into hiring Madigan’s law firm.

Andrew Cretal, who helped turn a site in the West Loop into a luxury apartment high-rise, was called as a witness in Madigan’s defense Thursday as the former speaker’s corruption trial hit its home stretch ahead of a holiday break.

Prosecutors have accused Madigan of leveraging his immense public power to get business for Madigan & Getzendanner, his property tax appeal law firm, including in July 2017, when he met with Cretal and an associate about the project known as Union West.

The meeting had been set up on Madigan’s request by then-Ald. Daniel Solis, who was secretly cooperating with the FBI and made video and audio recordings at the center of the bombshell case.

On Thursday, Cretal testified he never felt that he had to hire Madigan & Getzendanner to get what he wanted from Solis, who led the 25th Ward, where the project was, and also headed the influential City Council Zoning Committee.

Cretal said he also found Madigan and his law partner to be knowledgeable and professional, and that he was ultimately happy with their work.

“In your interactions with Mr. Madigan, did you ever feel fearful or intimidated or threatened into hiring that law firm?” asked Madigan attorney Daniel Collins.

“I did not,” Cretal responded.

Cretal’s testimony was intended to undercut allegations that Madigan used fear or intimidation to put the squeeze on developers and bring in lucrative contracts for his firm.

On cross-examination from prosecutors, though, Cretal said it was highly unusual that Solis had reached out to him to tell him that Madigan wanted to meet. In his 17 or 18 years as a developer, Cretal said, he had never gotten a request like that from a public official.

“Did you feel a little bit nervous going into this meeting?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker.

“Into the meeting with Madigan and Getzendanner? Yes, I was nervous,” Cretal said.

Cretal testified that he even asked a colleague, Rick Vogel, to come to the meeting with him so he would have a witness to vouch for what happened there.

“You wanted a second set of eyes and ears, right?” Streicker asked, which Cretal confirmed.

Cretal said he also was worried about an implication that if he did not hire Madigan’s firm, Union West would not get necessary approvals from City Council committees.

On further questioning from Madigan’s lawyers, though, Cretal said that worry dissipated after the meeting.

Throughout his testimony, Cretal, who is based in Virginia and appeared pursuant to defense subpoena, sounded less than thrilled to be on the stand, speaking almost exclusively in a deep monotone and offering bare minimum, one- or two-word responses.

At one point, when Collins asked Cretal if the East Coast was one hour ahead of Chicago due to time zones, he responded dryly: “That’s usually how it works.”

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.

He is charged alongside Michael McClain, 77, a former ComEd contract lobbyist from downstate Quincy and longtime confidant of the speaker’s. Both men have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors rested their case in chief early Wednesday. With a break next week for the Christmas holiday, the defense phase of the trial will stretch into the new year. Prosecutors have indicated they will call at least one witness in rebuttal, and closing arguments could come as soon as the week of Jan 6.

After Cretal left the stand, Madigan’s defense called Illinois Appellate Court Justice David Ellis, a best-selling novelist and the speaker’s former chief counsel, who spent time Thursday attempting to rehabilitate Madigan’s image, which was tattered somewhat in the dozens of undercover videos and wiretaps the jury heard.

Ellis said Madigan was very hands-on and wanted input from everybody. It didn’t matter to him who came up with the right answer, as long as it was right. “He didn’t want a bunch of yes-men just telling him how great he was,” Ellis said.

Madigan was also wary of big business and constantly told his staff to make sure the people were not being taken advantage of in legislation, according to Ellis.

Ellis also testified about his role as Madigan’s point person in the negotiations with ComEd over the 2011 “Smart Grid” legislation, which prosecutors allege was the focus of an overarching bribery scheme by the utility to win the speaker’s support.

Ellis said he was instructed to hold ComEd’s feet to the fire, insisting on job creation, rate caps and a sunset provision that would ensure the company had to come back to the General Assembly and show it had kept its word.

When Madigan attorney Todd Pugh asked Ellis if the speaker ever asked him to “go easy” on ComEd during negotiations, Ellis scoffed and said, “No, no, no.”

“If he had ever told me something like that, to go easy on somebody whose bill we were reviewing, I think I would have fallen out of my chair,” Ellis said.

Ellis also advised Madigan during negotiations in 2013 over AT&T’s ongoing efforts in the General Assembly to end mandated landline service, known by the acronym COLR. Ellis said that, like the ComEd bill, he had concerns that AT&T was concerned more about its bottom line than providing service to rural and poor areas.

Ellis said he told Madigan that the bill was “not OK.”

Earlier in the day, the jury heard from the lone witness called by McClain’s defense team: Stephen Selcke, a retired governmental affairs executive with AT&T Illinois, who was involved in the hiring of then-state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, a Madigan ally, as a subcontractor in 2017.

Selcke was initially on prosecutors’ witness list but was called instead by the defense after prosecutors indicated they would not put him on the stand. Defense attorneys wanted Selcke to tamp down allegations that former state Rep. Edward Acevedo’s hiring was a bribe to win Madigan’s assistance with the COLR legislation.

Indeed, Selcke testified Wednesday that as far as he knew there was no explicit arrangement for AT&T to hire Acevedo in exchange for Madigan’s support of bills the telecommunications giant wanted to pass.

But Selcke was a potential gold mine for the government in other ways, particularly on Thursday when the prosecution was allowed to show jurors a series of emails detailing pressure AT&T was getting from McClain to hire Madigan-friendly consultants.

The emailed discussion, revealed in court for the first time, came in late 2016 — about a year after AT&T had planned to cancel contracts with former state Rep. Annazette Collins, a Madigan ally, and the eldest sons of Acevedo, a Chicago Democrat who at the time was Madigan’s assistant majority leader.

That decision brought a negative reaction from McClain, who asked the telecommunications giant to reverse course, according to Selcke’s testimony Thursday.

After McClain intervened, AT&T renewed the contracts of both Collins and Apex Strategies, the company owned by Acevedo’s sons, Michael and Alex, according to testimony.

Under continued cross-examination by prosecutors, Selcke testified that later that year, as they prepared their 2017 consulting budget, his colleague Bob Barry suggested they set up the $60,000 contingency fund for future requests from “our friend in Quincy,” a reference to McClain.

“That would be OK with me as long as we realize, and make (AT&T President) Paul (La Schiazza) aware, that if we get folks crammed back down our throats we will have to steal from Invest in Illinois,” Selcke emailed back, according to a redacted copy of the email string shown in court.

Prosecutors accuse Madigan and McClain of inducing AT&T to hire Acevedo on a lucrative contract for little or no work so that Madigan would support AT&T’s favored legislation.

Collins was convicted last year of tax charges related to the payments from AT&T and is serving a one-year sentence in federal prison. Acevedo and his two sons were also convicted of tax-related counts stemming from Apex Strategies accounts.

At the end of the day, with jurors out of the room, McClain told the judge he would not take the stand in his own defense.

“Do you want to testify in your case?” Blakey asked, after giving him the standard admonishments about his rights as a defendant.

“No thank you, your honor,” McClain said.

It was the second time in two years McClain had to answer that question from a judge. He also declined to testify in last year’s “ComEd Four” bribery trial, which saw McClain and three others convicted.

There has so far been no indication that Madigan will take the stand either, though that decision has not been announced.

____

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.