CHICAGO — A former executive for electric utility Commonwealth Edison has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in bribing ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan for jobs and contracts for the Democratic power broker’s political allies.
John Hooker, a career employee at ComEd who worked his way up from the mail room to a job as the utility’s top internal lobbyist, is the first of the “ComEd Four” to face sentencing; his co-defendants are scheduled for their own hearings in the coming weeks.
In sentencing Hooker on Monday, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah zoomed out from the specific actions that led to across-the-board guilty verdicts for the ComEd Four, convicted in 2023 for orchestrating a yearslong bribery scheme targeted at Madigan to grease the wheels for major legislation the utility was pushing in Springfield.
“Corruption fuels a power that is wielded not for representative democracy by the will of the people, but things like oligarchy, autocracy, even kleptocracy, all while keeping up appearance of democracy,” Shah said. “To do business with corrupt power encourages it, and that’s what you did here.”
Sentencings for Hooker and his co-defendants were put on hold for more than two years, delayed by concerns of possible impact from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the death of the original judge who oversaw their case, and Madigan’s own lengthy trial.
The jury in the former speaker’s trial ended with a split verdict in February, including acquittals and deadlock on more than half of the charges — including bribery — both related to ComEd and entirely separate from the utility. But jurors returned guilty verdicts on each of the four counts involving Madigan’s own role in pushing for a handful of allies to get what were ultimately do-nothing contracts amounting to $1.3 million paid out from ComEd over eight years.
In wiretapped phone calls played both at trials for Madigan and the ComEd Four, Hooker and his co-defendant, longtime ComEd lobbyist Mike McClain, talked about having come up with the arrangement to conceal the no-work contractors within existing legitimate lobbying contracts.
In a February 2019 recording, McClain said the utility “had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us,” and Hooker agreed, saying their use of ComEd lobbyist Jay Doherty as a pass-through entity was “clean for all of us.”
“We don’t have to worry about whether or not, I’m just making this up, whether or not Mike Zalewski Sr., is doing any work or not,” McClain told Hooker in the phone call, referring to the former Chicago alderman who’d been put on Doherty’s contract the previous summer. “That’s up to Jay Doherty to prove that.”
Hooker concurred.
“We came up with this plan and between him (Doherty), our friend, and Tim (Mapes) and the alderman, they thought it was great,” Hooker said, using “our friend” to mean Madigan, as established across both trials, and referring to the speaker’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes.
More than six years after the FBI recorded that call, Hooker on Monday told Shah that “listening to himself” on those wiretapped calls was “a very humbling experience.”
“I do not like the way I sound on those recordings,” Hooker said. “I’m just deeply sorry after listening to those recordings of myself. … I pray that I’m not defined by these words and this case for the rest of the years that I have left on this earth.”
Reiterating prosecutors’ request for 56 months in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz on Monday cited more secret recordings of Hooker, which she said “shows this defendant knew full well these payments going to subcontractors … were paid for the purpose of buying legislation.”
In one February 2019 video surreptitiously recorded by ComEd exec-turned-FBI mole Fidel Marquez, Hooker imagined how Madigan might react if the utility could no longer pay the subcontractors through intermediaries.
“‘You’re not going to do something for me, I don’t have to do anything for you,’” Hooker said, speculating on the speaker’s thought process, adding that Madigan would never say it outright.
But Hooker attorney Jacqueline Jacobson emphasized that her client didn’t personally benefit from the bribery scheme and said “John believed in what he was doing” when it came to the legislation he was pushing for on behalf of ComEd.
“This is not a typical bribery case,” Jacobson said. “This is not cash in a bag. This is not benefiting someone in a way that is evil. This is for legislation.”
Before Shah handed down the 1 ½-year sentence — along with a $500,000 fine — the judge ruled Hooker lied on the witness stand when he testified in his own defense during trial. He also rebuked Hooker for his role in Illinois’ long history of corruption.
“It takes courage to speak up, to say no to the face of power, like Mr. Madigan,” Shah said. “It’s easy to say yes when you have the talent and the wherewithal to play within the corrupt system. … Lobbyists, corporate execs, public officials — whether in Springfield, Chicago or Washington, D.C. — should be reminded that there are still crimes on the books.”
Hooker sat stoically at the defense table when Shah delivered his verdict as dozens of family members and friends watched from the courtroom gallery, some reacting with silent tears. Later, Hooker exited the Dirksen Federal Courthouse flanked by his attorneys, making no comment to reporters.
He is scheduled to report to prison on Oct. 14.
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