‘My client is the speaker’: Jury hears tapped phone calls of Madigan’s co-defendant and longtime friend

CHICAGO – As of early 2019, Mike McClain had been a regular member of the House of Representatives in Springfield for the better part of 50 years, first as a Democratic lawmaker in the 1970s and then for decades as a high-profile contract lobbyist.

And although he officially retired in late 2016, McClain could still be seen in the marble halls of the Capitol building. He was especially likely to be in the third-floor office occupied by his old friend, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, along with his top deputies and staff.

It was in a conversation with one of those top officials in February 2019 that McClain shared the secret to his success as a lobbyist, even though he had no idea FBI agents were listening in on his call.

“His client is just Mike Madigan,” McClain said. “It’s not the Democratic Party… it’s not anyone who hired you, it’s not your mom and dad. The only person you care about is Mike Madigan. And if that’s the way you think and that’s the way you bring up your talking points, he’ll never doubt you.”

A federal jury heard that call and others like it Thursday as prosecutors played nearly three dozen recordings of wiretapped conversations captured on McClain’s cellphone between 2018 and 2019. Also sitting in the courtroom were McClain and Madigan, on trial in a case that alleged the two engaged in extortion and bribery, abusing the former president’s power to form a “criminal enterprise.”

McClain has already been convicted for his role in bribing the speaker with jobs and contracts for his political allies at electric utility Commonwealth Edison, where McClain was the company’s top outside lobbyist for decades.

The couple had a friendship that dated back to when they were both young state representatives. And over many years, McClain became one of Madigan’s closest friends and advisors.

But the feds also allege that McClain acted as the speaker’s “agent” — a term McClain himself would sometimes use to describe his work doing what he called Madigan’s “assignments.” In late 2018, one of those assignments involved convincing a veteran state representative to retire before he was ready to do so.

On the witness stand Thursday, former state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, recounted a phone call between himself and McClain in November 2018, just two days after he won reelection to the 15^th time.

As he did in two previous trials related to Madigan’s, Lang testified that he believed he would be promoted to House majority leader (a position second only to speaker) when the new legislature takes office in January 2019. He even thought that one day he might be promoted to speaker himself.

But McClain’s call was a cold reality check. Lang had been publicly accused of sexual harassment earlier in the year, although he was quickly cleared by a Legislative Inspector General investigation.

Madigan had asked Lang to resign his title as deputy majority leader after the first allegations from a woman that spring, which came on the heels of unrelated allegations of sexual harassment within the president’s political organization at the height of the #MeToo movement. And not long after the allegations against Lang, an employee in the speaker’s office accused Madigan’s former chief of staff of sexual harassment, prompting the speaker to fire him.

In that Nov. 8, 2018, call, McClain said the speaker’s office had received notice that another woman was threatening to come forward with harassment allegations if Lang was reinstated in a leadership position within the House Democratic caucus.

“So it’s not me talking anymore,” McClain said in the wiretapped phone call, which was played for the jury Thursday. “I’m the agent of someone who cares deeply about you, who thinks you should really move on.”

Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, Lang said he had no doubt who McClain was talking about.

“The call made it clear that my career had come to a standstill because the speaker was in control of my ability to advance through the ranks,” Lang said.

Former lobbyist Mike McClain (left), a longtime confidant of former House Speaker Michael Madigan (right), is pictured in previous appearances at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago in connection with his public trials for corruption. (Capitol News Illinois photos by Andrew Adams)

McClain also urged Lang to follow the path he and many former lawmakers have followed: lobbying. He even assured Lang that Madigan would help him get clients, although Lang told Bhachu that he believed the promise was “just an incentive for me to leave.” Ultimately, Lang resigned from the General Assembly in early 2019 after more than 30 years in the House, and has been a registered lobbyist ever since.

Prosecutors also played a series of calls between McClain and Madigan in which the two discussed Lang’s situation and strategized about how best to push him toward retirement. In a September 2018 call, Madigan asked McClain to “sit down with Lang,” which McClain did at a breakfast meeting that same fall.

In another wiretapped call several days before his big talk with Lang, McClain asked Madigan when he should “lower the boom” on Lang “because he’s not getting it.”

Such exchanges undermine what Madigan’s defense attorney, Tom Breen, said during opening statements earlier this week when he claimed that Madigan was “completely ignorant of what people are saying behind his back” in the more than 200 recordings of wiretaps that are expected to be played at trial.

“Those people may have a reason for doing what they do,” Breen said. “They have no authority to speak that way on behalf of Michael Madigan. He doesn’t talk that way, he doesn’t act that way. He has never demanded anything from anyone.

But other recordings played in court Thursday also showed McClain acting at Madigan’s request. For example, in a May 2018 call during the final week of the General Assembly’s spring legislative session, Madigan asked McClain to shoo away a former lawmaker-turned-lobbyist named Sam Panayotovich who had left a message at the office. president requesting a conversation with Madigan.

“Are you in a position to advise Mr. Panayotovich to stay away from me?” Madigan asked McClain.

Within 10 minutes, McClain called the lobbyist and briefly explained that “the optics just aren’t good” for the speaker to meet with Panayotovich and his lobbying partner Joe Berrios, who had recently been defeated for re-election. candidacy for Cook County assessor after his opponent accused him of rampant corruption.

Before playing the more than 30 recordings of wiretaps Thursday, prosecutors also showed jurors a December 2016 letter McClain sent to Madigan, in which McClain wrote that “I wanted to let my ‘real’ client know that I’m retiring as a lawyer.” lobbyist,” but said he was “willing… to make ‘assignments’” for the speaker.

“At the end of the day I am on the bridge with my musket with and for the Madigan family,” said the letter, addressed to both the speaker and his wife Shirley Madigan. “I will never leave your side, Shirley and Mike.”

Illinois Capitol News is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets across the state. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared in Illinois Capitol News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.