Key witness in Mike Madigan corruption trial wraps six days of testimony

CHICAGO (CN) — Week six of ex-Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s corruption trial concluded Thursday with Fidel Marquez, once energy company ComEd’s vice president for governmental and external affairs, leaving the witness stand after several rounds of direct and cross-examination.

Marquez had spent nearly six days on the stand since prosecutors first called him last Tuesday afternoon. He broke down for jurors how he said ComEd insiders worked to keep Madigan happy between 2011 and 2019. Madigan was speaker of the Illinois House at the time, and had a great deal of influence over the flow of legislation in the legislature.

Prosecutors say Madigan supported ComEd’s legislative agenda — and several key bills benefitting the company — between 2011 and 2019 in exchange for ComEd’s help to arrange jobs and kickbacks for his political allies. ComEd acknowledged, in 2020 as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the government, attempting to influence Illinois lawmakers in the same timeframe, and Marquez testified he wanted to ensure Madigan was “favorably disposed” to the company.

Marquez began cooperating with the FBI’s investigation into ComEd and Madigan in January 2019, after federal agents revealed they had captured him speaking on secretly wiretapped phone conversations. Marquez began wearing a wire himself not long after. He captured video recordings of conversations he had with Madigan’s co-defendant and former ComEd lobbyist Mike McClain, as well as with ComEd consultant Jay Doherty, ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and then-ComEd CEO Joe Dominguez.

Three of the those — McClain, Doherty and Hooker — were members of the “ComEd Four.” Along with ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who rounded out the quartet, they were convicted in May 2023 on corruption charges separate from but related to the conspiracy, bribery, fraud and racketeering counts Madigan and McClain face in this trial.

Marquez was also a star witness in the ComEd Four trial, and his testimony this past week echoed what he said in that trial last year.

The focus of Marquez’s secretly recorded conversations with McClain, Hooker and Doherty was a collection of subcontractors whom ComEd kept on payroll through Jay Doherty’s consulting firm from 2011 through 2019. They included Ed Moody and Ray Nice, political workers in Chicago’s 13th Ward — Madigan’s political home turf — as well as former 13th Ward Alderman Frank Olivo and former Chicago 23rd Ward Alderman Mike Zalewski. Former Democratic Illinois state Representative Eddie Acevedo was another person Marquez said ComEd paid as a subcontractor, though not through Doherty’s firm.

Jurors saw evidence last week that theses subcontractors did little work for ComEd in Springfield or Chicago, despite technically being on the company’s payroll.

“So as far as I know, and maybe you can tell me different, all these guys do is, they’re a sub under you and you cut them a check. Do they do anything? Or, what do they do? What do you have them doing?” Marquez asked Doherty in one secretly recorded February 2019 video jurors saw last Wednesday.

“To answer the question, not much,” Doherty responded.

Marquez voiced concern to Doherty and the other men he recorded that Dominguez, a former federal prosecutor, may not approve of the arrangement these subcontractors had with ComEd. But Dominguez was happy to keep the arrangement in place, per another clandestine video from March 2019.

“We got to do that business, you know?” Dominguez said.

This past Thursday and again on Tuesday — court was not in session on Friday or Monday — prosecutors presented evidence that McClain, acting as Madigan’s consigliere, pushed Marquez to find jobs for multiple individuals at ComEd. Some of the purported beneficiaries included youth interns from the 13th Ward and Kathleen Laski, the wife of former 23rd Ward Alderman Jim Laski. Jim Laski also served as the Chicago city clerk from 1995 to early 2006, when he was indicted on federal corruption charges. He pleaded guilty to a single count of bribery that March.

Last Thursday, jurors saw an internal ComEd document dating to January 2017 announcing Kathleen Laski had been made an “associate project manager” for ComEd’s training department.

Prosecutors wrapped up Marquez’s direct examination on Tuesday. McClain and Madigan’s defense team had little to offer in the way of counterevidence, so on cross-examination they instead tried to recontextualize the evidence jurors already saw.

Madigan’s attorney Tom Breen pointed out Wednesday that Marquez rarely communicated directly with Madigan, much less about jobs at ComEd. McClain often referenced “our friend” when discussing ComEd work, which Marquez said he understood meant Madigan. But Breen suggested that perhaps McClain was just doing his job as a ComEd lobbyist, keeping in mind the interests on an influential lawmaker with whom he had a longstanding relationship.

“You had a perception or a belief that Michael Madigan was making requests about jobs, legal contracts,” Breen said to Marquez on Wednesday.

Marquez countered he wasn’t the only one to think so.

“That was a belief that was widely shared, not just by me but by other leaders at ComEd,” he said.

The defense attorneys also attacked Marquez’s character. They painted him as self-serving and duplicitous, bringing up not only the fact that he snitched on his colleagues but his marital and legal troubles going back to 2014.

On cross-examination Wednesday and Thursday, Marquez told McClain’s attorney Patrick Cotter that he tried to hide $400,000 from his then-wife in 2014 while the couple was in the middle of divorce proceedings. When Marquez pleaded guilty in 2020, he didn’t immediately disclose that fact.

“You concealed that from the government?” Cotter asked Thursday morning.

Marquez replied that he “didn’t think it was relevant.”

Marquez also told Breen on Wednesday that he had incorrectly filled out a gun purchase form in Arizona this past March.

The form asked if the purchaser was under indictment for, or had been convicted of, a felony. Marquez answered “no” to both prompts, despite pleading guilty to a single conspiracy charge in September 2020 for his own role in facilitating ComEd’s suspect relationship with Madigan. His cooperation in this and the ComEd Four’s trial is part of his plea agreement.

Marquez said he needed a handgun to defend against snakes on his property in Arizona, adding that he had sent his dog to “snake avoidance school.”

After Marquez left the stand Thursday, prosecutors called several financial employees of ComEd and its parent company Exelon to the stand. They offered testimony that backed up what Marquez told jurors over the preceding week, such as noting that numerous invoices Doherty billed to ComEd made no mention of subcontractors on the list of services his firm performed.

After prosecutors exhaust their witnesses for the ComEd “episode” of the trial, there are still four more episodes to get through. They include accusations of Madigan attempting to help property developers in Chicago move along construction with help from former city zoning chair Danny Solis and his effort to get Solis a position in state government in 2018.

Presiding U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey said Thursday morning that he expects trial to continue into the new year, adding that there will likely not be proceedings over the week of Christmas.

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