CHICAGO (CN) — Attorneys on Wednesday presented their closing arguments in the federal perjury trial of Illinois political operative Tim Mapes, two weeks to the day after opening arguments began.
Federal prosecutors charged Mapes, 68, with two counts of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice in May 2021. They claim he lied seven times to a grand jury that March in order to shield his former boss, ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, from a federal investigation into the former speaker's own alleged corruption.
"Several years ago, the defendant appeared before a grand jury in this building and took that oath [to tell the truth]," Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Kathryn Schwartz told jurors Wednesday morning. "He corrupted the truth-seeking mission of the grand jury."
Mapes pleaded not guilty to both charges, with his defense team at trial characterizing him as public servant who cooperated with the federal Madigan investigation and its 2021 grand jury proceedings. He simply couldn't recall, Mapes' attorneys' said, specific answers to a small number of the grand jury questions he was asked.
"This case boils down to seven answers to over 550 questions," Mapes' lead attorney Andrew Porter, of the Chicago area law firm Salvatore Prescott & Porter, said during closing arguments.
Like many recent corruption cases in Illinois, Madigan — ex-chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party as well as the former House Speaker — lies at the center of Mapes' trial. Madigan was once one of the most powerful men in Illinois, serving in the state House for over 50 years and leading it for 36. Federal prosecutors say that while in office, he used his position to help pass laws benefitting Illinois' largest energy utility Commonwealth Edison between 2011 and 2019. In exchange, the company arranged jobs and contracts for his political allies.
Commonwealth Edison, known locally as ComEd, admitted to the bribery scheme in 2020 in exchange for a $200 million fine and a deferred prosecution agreement on a single, since-dismissed conversion charge. Madigan, though, now faces trial next April on 23 federal bribery, fraud and racketeering charges.
District attorneys in Chicago formally indicted the ex-speaker in March 2022 following four years of investigation into his involvement with ComEd, as well as his supposed attempts in 2018 to pass legislation transferring property in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood from state to city ownership. This would pave the way for a private developer to purchase it with the aid of another Madigan ally, former Chicago alderman-turned FBI informant Danny Solis, in exchange for the developer directing real estate tax work to Madigan's law firm.
Mapes spent close to three decades as Madigan's chief of staff, before the ex-speaker pushed him to resign in 2018 amid allegations that he had sexually harassed a Speaker's Office employee. He has also served as the executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party and clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives. Before the March 2021 grand jury, Mapes repeatedly said he was not aware of, or could not recall, dealings from 2017 to 2019 between Madigan and another of the former speaker's lieutenants, former ComEd lobbyist and Illinois state representative Michael McClain.
"[All] these questions are going to be for the 2017 through 2019 timeframe. Do you recall anyone ever describing any work - anyone at all describing any work or assignments [McClain] was performing on [Madigan's] behalf?" Mapes was asked during his grand jury testimony.
"I don't recall that — that I would have been part of any of that dialogue. I don't know why I would be," Mapes responded.
McClain, one of the "ComEd Four," was convicted this past May on multiple fraud and conversion charges for his own involvement in ComEd's bribery efforts. He is also named as a co-defendant in Madigan's trial next April. Calling Mapes a "gatekeeper" for Madigan and McClain, Schwartz argued he was close enough to both men to want to protect them from federal investigators.
"No one got in to see the wizard without going through [Mapes]... his mantra was, 'protect the boss,'" Schwartz said.
Schwartz spent her argument time going through Mapes' seven alleged lies one by one, playing phone recordings and showing email messages between Mapes and McClain that seems to contradict his 2021 testimony. In one phone conversation between the pair, McClain said he was "staying in the foxhole" with Mapes.
In a separate May 2018 call Mapes made to McClain, he assigned McClain to escort Madigan to an event at the Springfield restaurant Saputo's — despite telling the grand jury that he wasn't aware of McClain performing any tasks for the then-speaker during the same time period. Yet another conversation had Mapes and McClain discussing how McClain had to let former state representative Lou Lang know, at Madigan's urging, that he had "no future" in the Legislature following 2018 sexual harassment allegations against him from a medical marijuana advocate.
The recordings were only a small sample of the evidence jurors have heard over the past two weeks. As with the ComEd Four trial, Mapes' case lays bare the internal workings of Madigan's Illinois political machine; a machine that federal prosecutors have compared to an organized crime outfit. Schwartz argued that Mapes' grand jury responses to "Madigan 101" questions were calculated "to be as unhelpful as possible," as part of his unofficial omertà oath to that outfit.
"On March 31, 2021, the defendant decided he would stay in the foxhole and protect the boss," Schwartz said. "Something he had been doing for 25 years."
Porter did not dispute that Mapes wanted to "protect the boss" while in Madigan's employ, noting that Mapes himself had used the phrase in 2018. But he claimed this only referred to Mapes' work in the Illinois political arena, not anything criminal.
"Protect the boss... that means protect him from political fallout, not if he committed a crime," Porter said.
Porter also brushed off the phone recordings and email messages between Mapes and McClain. Like Schwartz, he went over many of their individual conversations. But in contrast to the prosecution, Porter claimed that they mentioned nothing explicitly illegal and only discussed issues immaterial to the grand jury investigation into Madigan.
"All of these tasks and assignments [Mapes and McClain discussed], all of them deal with forgettable, insignificant legal conduct," Porter said.
The defense attorney also repeated the argument his colleague Kathleen Hill made on the trial's opening day, that Mapes was an old man with imperfect memory, and that a failure to recall specific events during a stressful grand jury proceeding is not the same as perjury or obstruction.
"Tim was admonished repeatedly that he could be punished if he lied... And so what he did is he testified honestly and carefully," Porter said.
Grand jury investigators did not show Mapes any specific documents related to his seven alleged lies when he testified, and while prosecutors deemed withholding documents a standard practice to prevent witnesses from offering biased testimony, Porter claimed it just made it more difficult for Mapes to answer investigators' questions accurately.
"The government was sitting on a pile of evidence, and they didn't share any of it with him... It was all the more reason for him not to guess or to speculate," Porter said.
Jurors began their deliberations late Wednesday afternoon following both attorneys' arguments. If convicted, Mapes faces up to 25 years in prison.
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