Chicago Tribune reporter who wrote book on Madigan says testimony to distance himself from McClain ‘backfired’

CHICAGO — A veteran Illinois statehouse reporter said he believed former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s decision to testify in the federal case against him “backfired.”

Ray Long, who has covered Illinois state government for the Chicago Tribune since 1998 and wrote the 2022 book “The House That Madigan Built,” was in court for much of the 12-week trial that saw 60 people take the stand, including Madigan.

Long said Madigan, known as “The Velvet Hammer” and/or “The Sphinx” because of his stoic demeanor as he ruled the Illinois statehouse for 40 years, did a “pretty good” job on the stand — but it also “backfired” in a couple of instances.

“The most prominent (example of a misstep) being that he saw the prosecutors rise up and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to be able to counter some of this,'” Long said. “And they were able to bring in the tape that Madigan was quoted as saying some of these guys who are getting jobs at ComEd are ‘making out like bandits.'”

Long also didn’t believe Madigan did himself any favors by attempting to make McClain look like a rogue operative who wasn’t working on the speaker’s behalf, which McClain had famously and publicly done for decades.

“I think that that is one thing that the jurors actually were quick to catch onto,” Long said. “And they knew then after hearing all of his conversations on recordings and all of the notes back and forth … certainly the notes to Madigan from McClain where he expressed his devotion to the speaker and his causes, etc. Saying that he would even ‘stand with his musket at the bridge to fight for Madigan.’

“(Madigan) trying to distance himself and trying to throw all of the blame onto McClain for all of the guys who ended up on ComEd contracts that were subcontractors through a third party … I thought that was disingenuous. He tried to downplay it, but I think he overplayed his hand at that point. And that’s what the jurors have told us too, the ones we’ve been able to talk to. They spotted that difference between Madigan’s relationship with McClain that was obvious on tape, that they were good friends, that they were confidants, that they ate out a lot together and that the relationship was real strong.”

Even as he tried to wash his hands of McClain during his testimony, Madigan told the jury when asked about it that his friendship with McClain had ended over the case. Long said he didn’t think that sat well with the jury either.

“He (Madigan) saw how McClain had kept a lot of records and how McClain had been caught on wires in conversations with Madigan,” Long said. “And so it looks like this once close relationship was now over, but it certainly struck jurors as a moment where they thought that Madigan wasn’t as straightforward on that point as they thought he could or should be, and that gave them rise to think maybe he’s not a straight shooter on other parts of the testimony.”

McClain’s defense team believes this latest ruling will help clear their client in his previous conviction, but Long isn’t so sure — although he acknowledges he isn’t a lawyer. He’a curious to see what implications the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on “Snyder vs. United States” has on the so-called “ComEd Four” case.

“I think that that will stand or fall on its own merits,” Long said about the ComEd Four case. “But it’s a close call, because McClain’s defense in the ComEd Four case, as well as the defense of the other three co-defendants in the ComEd Four case, have been aimed at trying to say, ‘Look, the ground rules have changed since the verdict came down. We should be retried or the case should be thrown out because of the new way that the U.S. Supreme Court is interpreting the law and that the part of the law that applied to the ComEd Four case was undercutting this guilty verdict against us.’

“So they’ve got a case there, but that I believe is separate from the case here that was just completed in the last week with the trial with Madigan.”

When told Patrick Cotter, McClain’s attorney, was confident in his client getting a new trial, Long acknowledged he isn’t an attorney.

“Yeah, well, I think that’s what he (Cotter) would say too, but he may be standing on some pretty solid ground,” Long said. “He knows the law 10,000 times better than I do.

“You never know what the feds are going to do. They may think, ‘Once again, the whole kind of blurry lines of lobbying and what’s not allowed,’ I think became part of the issue for the jurors. One of them told me that they thought what McClain had done was illegal, so they couldn’t find any issues with him. However, once again, they couldn’t come up with a unanimous verdict one way or another, guilty or not guilty. So they deadlocked on that too.”

Madigan is the latest in a long line of Illinois officials to be convicted of felonies involving governmental misdeeds. Now that the largest figure in Illinois state government history has fallen, does this mean corruption is over in the Land of Lincoln?

“They need to do some things to make it change,” Long said. “They get to do more than just say there’s been a difference now. Speaker Madigan’s gone. This is not episodic. This is not a one-off. This is a case where there’s been a conga line of lawmakers and city hall members from Chicago and frankly elected officials all over the state who have gone to prison, gone to jail and have broken laws.

“If there is anything that the Madigan verdict and the subsequent issues that have been exposed through court hearings, trials and briefs, if there is anything in all of that that detailed the messy political world of Illinois politics, it was that there are rules that are just too loose in Illinois and politicians over the years have just refused to tighten them. … We all know what’s right and wrong, and that doesn’t always match up to what’s legal and illegal in this state. That has to be one of the big problems that needs to be fixed.”