By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO – For the past three months, the judge presiding over former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s federal corruption trial has reminded jurors before each lunch break and evening recess not to discuss the case with anyone, even among themselves.
But as the defense prepares to rest its case Thursday morning, the only thing separating the jury from the deliberation room will be three days of closing arguments scheduled for next week. If the lawyers’ remaining to-do list – which includes finalizing the all-important jury instructions – stays on track, jurors will finally begin deliberating the week of Jan. 27.
Before Madigan’s attorneys put their defense case to bed, they questioned final witnesses and put final bits of evidence into the record, including a sort of message from Gov. JB Pritzker. The governor’s name has come up repeatedly in trial, mostly in the context of Madigan having agreed to recommend Chicago alderman-turned-FBI mole Danny Solis for an appointment to a high-paying state board position.
“If called as a witness, Gov. JB Pritzker would testify that he does not recall meeting with Michael Madigan on Dec. 4, 2018, and he does not recall Madigan ever discussing or recommending Daniel Solis or Maya Solis, either orally or in writing, for any position on a State of Illinois board or commission,” the former speaker’s attorney Lari Dierks read to the jury as one of nearly two dozen stipulations she gave at the end of the trial day Wednesday.
A stipulation is a fact agreed on by both the defense and prosecution put forth to the jury as evidence in equal weight to exhibits and testimony, though few of the roughly 90 stipulations in trial so far have been nearly as interesting as Wednesday’s Pritzker-related one. Jurors have already seen a series of videos Solis secretly recorded of meetings between himself and Madigan discussing a potential board appointment, the last of which took place a few weeks after Pritzker’s November 2018 election as governor.
In that meeting, Madigan mentioned that he was set to meet with the governor-elect the following week and asked Solis to send him a resume beforehand – along with his daughter Maya’s for good measure.
Evidence introduced when former Madigan and Pritzker staffers, including a now-congresswoman, were on the witness stand showed Solis’ name was absent from any iterations of the recommendation list the speaker gave to the Pritzker team. But they were never directly asked whether Solis’ name came up during any meetings or phone calls during that time.
Madigan and Solis also testified about the board seat discussions, with the former speaker this week attempting to characterize his promise to Solis as merely being “prepared to entertain the possibility I would submit his name,” he testified.
He also said Solis was taken out of the running for a recommendation in January 2019 when news reports revealed the alderman had been an FBI cooperating witness. Further revelations that Solis had secretly recorded Madigan wouldn’t be made public for another few years.
The former speaker’s promise to submit Solis’ name for Pritzker’s consideration in staffing up a new administration is the basis for one of the seven bribery charges in the former speaker’s 23-count indictment. Prosecutors say Madigan’s willingness to help Solis was in exchange for the alderman’s repeated offers to introduce the powerful speaker to more real estate developers so that his property tax appeals law firm could pitch them on its services.
Defense’s final witness
Earlier Wednesday, the jury heard from the defense’s final witness: Springfield lobbyist Heather Wier Vaught, who’d served a dozen years as an attorney in Madigan’s office, including as chief counsel.
Wier Vaught gave roughly the same testimony as two other former top speaker’s office lawyers the defense had previously called as witnesses. She said Madigan followed staff recommendations about key legislation at issue in trial and never interfered with negotiations of those bills.
Her accounts about intensive conflict of interest protocols in the speaker’s office and law firm were substantially similar to those of her successor, as well as Madigan’s longtime law firm partner.
But Wier Vaught’s time on the witness stand may be more memorable to the jury due to the laughter that arose in the courtroom after she spilled water while trying to pour from a pitcher with a faulty lid provided for witnesses.
“This is not a surprise,” Wier Vaught joked post-spill. The jury joined in on the pitcher joke again later when U.S. District Judge John Blakey instructed his clerk to “throw it in the garbage.”
But beyond the water incident – and Blakey’s frequent requests for Wier Vaught to slow down her testimony from his estimate of 300 words per minute, which drew laughter from Madigan – Wier Vaught’s time on the witness stand may also stick in jurors’ minds for the contentious cross-examination.
Several times during an hour of questioning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur tried to undermine Wier Vaught’s credibility, claiming she had represented Madigan in “every facet” of his personal and professional life.
Wier Vaught clarified that she never represented him on anything having to do with his law firm but acknowledged that outside her role as chief counsel in the speaker’s office, she’d served as one of several attorneys representing Madigan’s various political fundraising committees and the Democratic Party of Illinois.
MacArthur also pointed out that Wier Vaught had represented Madigan on an individual basis in 2018, though jurors were left to figure out for themselves the significance of that time period, as the prosecutor didn’t elaborate.
At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, Madigan’s inner circle was in crisis mode after former political staffer Alaina Hampton, then 28, accused the speaker of mishandling her sexual harassment complaint against Kevin Quinn, who was 13 years her senior and married during the alleged harassment episode in the fall of 2016. Hampton’s accusations also extended to Wier Vaught, who got involved after Hampton sent a letter about the incident to Madigan’s home in late 2017.
Based on the judge’s pretrial ruling, the jury has only been told Quinn was dismissed due to allegations of “misconduct.” But prosecutors introduced the storyline in the context of other sexual harassment allegations, including the firing of Madigan’s longtime chief of staff Tim Mapes in June of 2018, four months after Hampton’s public accusations.
“You’ve been loyal to Mr. Madigan for many years, haven’t you?” MacArthur asked.
“I’m not sure I’d use that phrase but yes, I worked with him for many years,” Wier Vaught replied.
“You’ve worked to protect his interests over those years, haven’t you?” MacArthur pushed again.
“Again, I’m not sure if I’d characterize it that way,” Wier Vaught said.
Later, MacArthur asked about the day in May 2019 when roughly 100 FBI agents were dispatched to the homes – and one office – of at least eight Madigan allies, including Quinn and longtime Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain, the former speaker’s co-defendant at trial.
News of the coordinated raids wouldn’t surface in the press for at least another month, but Wier Vaught confirmed that after she’d heard about a search on at least one person’s home, she spoke with former Madigan staffer Will Cousineau.
At that point, Cousineau had been gone from the speaker’s office for nearly two years and Wier Vaught had been out for one. Now both lobbyists, they were still part of a small circle of advisers who provided political advice to Madigan. Cousineau testified earlier during trial that he’d reluctantly agreed to pay Quinn $1,000 a month for six months at McClain’s request to give Madigan time to figure out how to help the out-of-work former staffer.
Wier Vaught disputed MacArthur’s version of events regarding the meeting with Cousineau. When asked if it took place in Cousineau’s downtown Springfield office – an occasional meeting place for McClain and Madigan to discuss political matters – Wier Vaught said no; they sat on a bench outside the Illinois State Library, which is across the street from the Capitol in Springfield.
MacArthur also insisted that longtime Madigan staffer-turned-lobbyist Shaw Decremer, whose apartment was also searched by the FBI that day, drove Wier Vaught to the meeting.
“That’s not my recollection,” Wier Vaught said three times before MacArthur dropped it.
Wier Vaught did confirm, though, that she’d told Cousineau about the raids on at least a couple Madigan allies, though she said she didn’t remember talking about McClain.
A large portion of Wier Vaught’s testimony focused on her negotiations on bills backed by electric utility Commonwealth Edison and telecom giant AT&T Illinois. Prosecutors allege Madigan solicited bribes in the form of jobs and contracts for his political allies at those companies in exchange for easier passage of their legislative priorities in Springfield.
Wier Vaught summarized the months of negotiations on both a major energy bill in 2016 and legislation to end a 1930s-era law requiring the expensive maintenance of aging copper landlines. In both instances, Wier Vaught said she insisted on including provisions ComEd and AT&T didn’t want, or taking out things they did.
But MacArthur sought to undermine that testimony by pointing out that after she left the speaker’s office, Wier Vaught became an external lobbyist for both ComEd and AT&T, contracts that both ended by late 2019.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
