Mike McClain’s job recommendations weren’t bribes – or even improper, witness says
CHICAGO – For decades, electric utility Commonwealth Edison renewed its contract with top Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain – in part because of his strategic abilities, but also because of his close relationship with longtime Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
But it was this closeness with Madigan that led ComEd officials to jokingly refer to McClain as a “double agent,” the utility’s former lead attorney on Tuesday told a federal jury tasked with weighing bribery and racketeering charges against Madigan and McClain.
In addition to his other corporate clients, ex-ComEd lawyer Tom O’Neill said McClain “counted the speaker as a client” – something the jury has already heard McClain himself say on wiretapped recordings played in court last week.
“It was hard to know which client he was serving,” O’Neill said. “Seemed he had a lot of clients, a lot of interests, and sometimes he was serving his own interests.”
The interests motivating McClain were most difficult to parse, O’Neill said, when the lobbyist would pass along the name of someone he wanted ComEd to hire or contract with. During his years as the utility’s top attorney, and later when he was serving as general counsel for ComEd’s parent company, Exelon, O’Neill grew to understand that McClain was often asking for job-related favors for people connected with Madigan.
Job recommendations are central to prosecutors’ theory that Madigan, through McClain, solicited bribes in the form of jobs and contracts at ComEd for the speaker’s political allies. In exchange, the feds allege, ComEd had an easier time getting key legislation across the finish line in Springfield.
McClain was already convicted for his role in bribing the former speaker after last year’s “ComEd Four” trial, though he and his three co-defendants are challenging their convictions.
O’Neill’s 10 hours on the witness stand Monday and Tuesday marked a repeat performance from his appearance in last year’s trial, where he testified about all the same areas – and gave substantially similar answers.
Under questioning from McClain’s attorney about how often McClain actually made the recommendations, O’Neill testified that “sometimes it appeared that was all he did” – but immediately added that in reality, it was probably not that frequent an occurrence.
McClain’s persistence when checking in on the status of those recommendations could sometimes be overbearing, O’Neill said. However, he told defense attorneys, he didn’t think the job recommendations were necessarily improper and certainly didn’t feel McClain’s behavior violated ComEd’s code of business conduct.
And McClain was far from the only lobbyist who passed along names from elected officials for job recommendations at ComEd, O’Neill testified. He said he also came to understand that accepting the names and considering them – whether a recommended person was ultimately hired or not – was part of building goodwill with elected officials.
“You have to give to get in most cases,” O’Neill said, following up with a phrase he learned from ComEd’s former top internal lobbyist. “John Hooker used to say that ‘you have to show people you care before they care what you know.’”
Hooker was convicted last year alongside McClain.
McClain’s attorney, Patrick Cotter, also took O’Neill through a list of names McClain had passed on to him and other officials at ComEd who the utility never ended up hiring – including Madigan’s own son-in-law.
Asked if he was comfortable saying no to McClain’s job recommendations, O’Neill replied, “At times, yes.”
Upon further questioning from Cotter, O’Neill agreed that he never felt as if saying ‘no’ to McClain would put ComEd’s legislation in danger.
O’Neill also repeatedly said ‘no’ when asked if McClain ever said ComEd’s legislative strategy hinged on hiring Madigan’s allies. He also said he never believed the passage of the 2011 law that kicked off ComEd’s financial recovery after a long downturn was related to a contract he approved with an attorney he later learned was a prolific fundraiser for the speaker. The contract between ComEd and the Reyes Kurson law firm was the subject of much of O’Neill’s Monday testimony.
But when it was Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker’s turn to question O’Neill again after cross-examination, she immediately sought to undercut his answers that he didn’t believe job recommendations had anything to do with ComEd’s legislative success, suggesting that O’Neill might have just been in the dark about deals made in private.
Streicker asked if there were meetings or phone calls he was not privy to, including those between McClain and his boss, then-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who was also convicted alongside McClain last year. He acknowledged that he wasn’t present during the pair’s every conversation.
“Were you involved in any conversation between Mr. Madigan and Mr. McClain at this time?” she asked.
“I was not,” O’Neill replied.
O’Neill’s testimony also got into another job recommendation central to the feds’ theory of bribery: the appointment of businessman Juan Ochoa to ComEd’s board.
Ochoa was the only name considered after former board member Jesse Ruiz stepped down in late 2017 in preparation to run for Illinois attorney general. O’Neill confirmed that those involved in replacing Ruiz were interested in appointing another Latino to the $78,000-per-year job.
According to emails shown to the jury Wednesday, Ochoa had sent his resume to a Madigan staffer, who in turn forwarded it directly to Pramaggiore.
A “due diligence” background check conducted on Ochoa also pulled up items from Ochoa’s past – including a property he owned that was foreclosed upon after he’d stopped paying the mortgage. But O’Neill said those things weren’t immediately disqualifying.
O’Neill said he was more concerned with the “optics” of seating a person recommended by Madigan.
“I felt that having someone recommended by or close to the speaker would sort of feed the narrative that we were too close,” he testified.
But, O’Neill said, Pramaggiore kept pushing for Ochoa’s appointment, and finally after more than a year and a half, Ochoa was seated on the board in April 2019.