'That's you laughing, sir, isn't it?': Prosecutor launches into ex-Illinois Speaker Madigan as cross-examination begins

CHICAGO — The hotly anticipated cross-examination of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan kicked off Monday with a sledgehammer of a wiretap: Audio of a 2018 phone call in which Madigan and his co-defendant Michael McClain chuckle about how some ComEd contractors “made out like bandits,” as Madigan put it, for doing very little work.

“That’s you laughing, sir, isn’t it?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu asked Madigan after playing the audio of the phone call.

Madigan confirmed that yes, it was.

The tape has the potential to be highly damaging to Madigan’s case, and his attorneys fought hard to keep it away from jurors. Prosecutors were only allowed to use it after Madigan, who in a surprise move last week took the stand in his own defense, testified that he was angry and surprised to learn that some of the men he had referred to ComEd had allegedly done little or no real work.

That gave prosecutors a chance to play the tape, on which Madigan said “some of these guys have made out like bandits.”

“Oh my god, for very little work, too,” McClain responds. “Very little work.”

Madigan and McClain started the conversation talking about a specific ComEd contractor, Dennis Gannon, who is not part of the indictment. But Bhachu had Madigan confirm from the stand that on the “bandits” tape they were apparently talking about more than one person.

“You used the term ‘guys’ in the plural in that conversation, don’t you sir?” Bhachu asked, opening the door for jurors to potentially infer they were talking about some of the ComEd subcontractors at issue in the case.

Bhachu asked short and pointed questions about the tape, carefully declining Madigan an opening to potentially explain himself. The tape will surely come up again on re-direct examination, when Madigan’s attorney will question him once again.

Madigan’s cross-examination drew high interest at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey’s courtroom swelled to capacity as well as a separate overflow courtroom seven floors above.

Dressed in a gray suit and purple tie, Madigan appeared much less relaxed than he did last week when he fielded questions from his attorney. At times, he and Bhachu sparred over his definition of what “several” years meant.

Later, Bhachu stopped Madigan and admonished him to please answer the question posed, and said if he didn’t understand the question he’d try to rephrase it.

“Is that fair?” Bhachu said.

Madigan shot back, “I hope so.”

Jurors also heard, in Madigan’s own words, the mechanics by which the old patronage system operated: People would come into the 13th Ward looking for work, and Madigan, as ward committeeman, would tell them “we’ll get you a job, but you’re going to work for the Democratic Party.”

Jurors saw him give that explanation in video clips from a 2009 interview Madigan gave as part of a University of Illinois-Chicago oral history project on former mayor Richard J. Daley.

Prosecutors want to draw a straight line from the old patronage system to Madigan and McClain's alleged scheme to reward political allies with cushy ComEd subcontracts.

But on questioning about his UIC interview, Madigan carefully avoided characterizing the old patronage system as an explicit exchange of a job for political work – sensitive, surely, to the fact that the bribery charges allege such an exchange regarding the subcontracts.

“I viewed my (ward committeeman) job as finding people to work on behalf of Democratic candidates, and a lot of these people did it in the expectation they’d get a job or a promotion,” Madigan said on the stand Monday.

Bhachu spent much of the first hour of his cross focusing on Madigan associates who were awarded lucrative consulting contracts with ComEd and how it could be that Madigan knew that they weren’t doing any work.

He focused particularly on former 13th Ward Ald. Frank Olivo, who was Madigan’s neighbor for years, has children who referred to Madigan as “uncle,” and was even on a short list of invitees to Madigan’s 2018 birthday party.

Bhachu also asked about another ComEd subcontractor, Ray Nice, one of Madigan’s loyal precinct captains who was being paid tens of thousands of dollars by ComEd through a consulting company owned by Jay Doherty, the then-head of the City Club of Chicago.

“While Nice was getting paid by Doherty, he was still a 13th Ward precinct captain?

“Yes he was,” Madigan said.

“You didn’t have any idea that your precinct captain wasn’t doing a lick of work for ComEd? Is that your testimony?” Bhachu asked.

Madigan responded, “Yes it is.”

Madigan, 82, has been on the witness stand since Tuesday and so far has faced mostly sympathetic questioning from his own attorney, taking the jury through his strict upbringing and rise to power, while emphatically and repeatedly denying he ever abused his public office for private gain.

Before the questioning began, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey heard arguments on just how wide-ranging the government’s questioning can be, including several areas of inquiry that had been previously barred by the judge as irrelevant or too prejudicial for the jury.

Among them: Madigan’s allegedly fractured relationship with former McPier boss Juan Ochoa, whom Madigan later recommended for a cushy seat on ComEd’s board of directors.

Madigan testified Wednesday that he mended fences with Ochoa at some point after Ochoa fired a former Madigan staffer at then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s request. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said that was far from the full story.

“That lends emphasis to this idea that Mr. Madigan avoids confrontation, is conciliatory,” Bhachu argued in court Wednesday after the jury had gone home for the day. In fact, Madigan retaliated by blocking debt-restructuring legislation that McPier badly needed, Bhachu said.

Bhachu said he also wants to ask Madigan whether he knew that Jeffrey Rush, one of the people whom he wanted to help with a job, had been convicted of three felonies and that three women had been the “subject of that misconduct.”

Rush, the son of longtime U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush, had worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections but got in trouble for having a sexual relationship with a parolee.

Collins objected, saying, “I don’t see how asking a bunch of questions that dirty up Mr. Rush in an attempt to dirty up Mr. Madigan are relevant.”

Madigan, a Southwest Side Democrat, and his longtime confidant, Michael McClain, 77, of downstate Quincy, are charged in a 23-count indictment alleging that Madigan’s vaunted state and political operations were run like a criminal enterprise to amass and increase his power and enrich himself and his associates.

In addition to alleging bribery schemes involving ComEd and AT&T Illinois, the indictment accuses Madigan of pressuring developers to hire the speaker’s law firm and trying to win business by secretly supporting legislation to transfer state-owned land in Chinatown to the city so developers could build a high-rise.

Both Madigan and McClain have denied wrongdoing.

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