‘I control the contract’: Longtime Madigan precinct captain Ed Moody takes stand in ‘ComEd Four’ bribery trial, says speaker set him up with lobbying deal

A legendary precinct captain for former House Speaker Michael Madigan told jurors in the “ComEd Four” bribery trial Tuesday that the speaker got him a $45,000-a-year contract with one of the utility’s top lobbyists but made it clear the deal would disappear if he stopped working on campaigns.

Edward Moody, for years one of Madigan’s top door-knockers, recounted without hesitation the Democratic speaker’s warning when he told Moody about the arrangement: “I control that contract and if you stop doing political work, you’ll lose that contract.”

That message was reinforced when Moody met with Michael McClain, one of Madigan’s longtime confidants, at Huck Finn Restaurant on the Southwest Side. Moody testified McClain told him the contract was “a hell of a plum and that I owe the speaker big.”

Under the deal arranged by the speaker, Moody testified, he spent the next seven years collecting monthly checks from ComEd, funneled through a series of Madigan’s associates, mostly for doing nothing.