The corruption/bribery trial of the “ComEd Four” – Anne Pramaggiore, John Hooker, Jay Doherty and Michael McClain – is set to begin tomorrow, Tuesday, March 14. The spider at the center of this web is of course Michael Madigan, the former Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, who was indicted this time last year on charges stemming from the ComEd bribery scheme.
To make the long arm short, Commonwealth Edison’s Bribery Department (see July 20, 2020 Deferred Prosecution Agreement) offered its payroll and 1099 consulting gigs to Madigan as a patronage machine to perform for him the same function that the City of Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department used to perform for the late mayor Richard J. Daley back in the day. The trial will focus on the untrammeled control that ComEd and Exelon Corp., its dirigiste corporate parent, exercised over the Illinois General Assembly. Exelon had so many legislative victories in Springfield one might reasonably wonder if, as a recent orange politician once asked, they got tired of winning.
But ComEd’s influence over the General Assembly is one thing. Its influence over the Illinois judicial system is quite another, and the surface of that scandal hasn’t even been scratched yet. That’s what we’ll be addressing in the Sparkspread Blog going forward.
To understand ComEd/Exelon’s control over the Illinois judiciary, one must understand two things: first, Madigan’s control over the Cook County Democratic Party and its role in slating candidates for judicial elections; and, second, Madigan’s implicit, continuing obligation to safeguard the legislative victories he handed to Anne Pramaggiore. We’ll tackle the second one first.
Based on the July 2020 Deferred Prosecution Agreement, Madigan’s services to ComEd had a monetary worth of about $1,324,000, which is a pitiful sum in comparison to Larry Householder’s take from Ohio’s First Energy. But Madigan knew he had an obligation beyond just passing the legislation ComEd wanted. Madigan had to protect ComEd from actions by third parties that might diminish or threaten the value he was supposedly delivering to ComEd (i.e., favorable legislation). In this respect the ComEd-Madigan bribery arrangement is the same as a local mafioso’s protection/extorion racket. Madigan had a brand, a reputation for obtaining effective and lucrative legislative gains, to protect. The money ComEd paid to Madigan’s recommended persons was the protection money, or street tax, ComEd had to pay for Madigan’s benefit.
Yesterday’s article in the Chicago Tribune shows how Madigan’s protection racket played out in the ComEd bribery scheme when actions by third parties were concerned:
(Line blurs between politics, crime, Chicago Tribune, March 12, 2023).
Madigan had to kneecap the 2018 consumer protection bill to protect his client, ComEd. The effects on Illinois ratepayers were no less parasitic than that of a local mafioso on his own town.
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