Madigan's co-suspect had unparalleled access to the speaker, ex-top aide testifies

(CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS) – Under the stained glass dome of the Capitol in Springfield, lobbyists often wander the building, ducking into a quiet corner to make phone calls or ducking into an empty committee room to send emails.

Some veteran lobbyists have longstanding arrangements with lawmakers that allow them to hang out in their offices, or at least provide a place where they can store a coat during long legislative days.

But no lobbyist had such a makeshift office as Mike McClain, who — because of his longtime friendship with former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — moved freely in and out of the speakers’ suite on the third floor of the Statehouse. When he wasn’t sitting on the couch outside the door of room 300, McClain was often working in the small conference room inside.

McClain’s access to the often elusive Madigan — and the speaker’s rare trust in McClain — are at the center of federal corruption charges, which allege that the way they wielded Madigan’s power amounted to a “criminal enterprise.” which enriched the speaker and his political allies.

Prosecutors spent much of the first two weeks of their trial on these charges trying to paint a picture of the relationship between Madigan and McClain. The jury has already heard dozens of phone calls between the two in which they discuss matters ranging from How to force a sitting MP to retiredown to the mundane, including making dinner plans.

In one clip, the famously cellphone-less Madigan used McClain’s phone to call his wife and read her the soups — “cream of broccoli, spinach with egg drops” — on the menu of a restaurant where they were apparently meeting.

In addition to seeing McClain’s retirement announcement letter pledging his lifelong loyalty to the Madigan and his family, the jury also heard phone calls last week in which McClain called the speaker his “real client.”

And on Wednesday, the jury heard another, while the other party in the wiretapped conversation was on the witness stand.

By the time of the call in April 2018, longtime Madigan aide Will Cousineau had been lobbying for nearly a year, after working in the speaker’s office for nearly two decades. McClain asked Cousineau what he thought of “the dark side,” a term he often used to refer to lobbying, especially if the lobbyist had left government service.

Cousineau responded that it was “stressful, but in a different way,” adding that years of campaign work had been “good training.”

“As long as we remember who our real client is,” McClain said. “It’s not easy, but it softens it.”

“Yes, it’s easy to keep your priorities clear when you remember that,” Cousineau said after noting that he had no regrets about missing a customer call earlier that evening because he had been with Madigan.

More than six years later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz asked what Cousineau meant by that comment.

“Just keeping the speaker’s interests in mind,” he said.

Cousineau’s testimony, given under an immunity agreement with prosecutors, is the third time he was called to the witness stand in related cases since March 2023. Those trials ended in convictions for McClain And Madigan’s former chief of staff, Tim Mapes.

In describing the relationship between Madigan and McClain, Cousineau said Wednesday that “the speaker trusted Mr. McClain – his advice.” He also told the jury that McClain regularly participated in strategy meetings with the speaker’s senior staff.

McClain sometimes participated in Sunday conference calls on “bill review,” Cousineau said, and was often involved in political meetings discussing strategy and fundraising for campaigns in the Illinois House.

The jury also heard a call from December 2018 in which McClain spoke for an uninterrupted 2.5 minutes about how Madigan could better protect himself and his allies through key committee chair appointments amid the turnover in the General Assembly.

Each time Schwartz asked Cousineau about another type of meeting that McClain regularly attended, she took pains to reiterate in her questions that McClain was not, and never had been, an employee in the speaker’s office.

Instead of emerging as a staffer in Springfield, McClain was thrust into politics at a young age when he was appointed to fill his father’s legislative seat after suffering a fatal heart attack on the Illinois House floor in the early 1970s . After ten years in the General Assembly, McClain lost his re-election bid and turned to lobbying.

McClain eventually became the chief contract lobbyist for the electric utility Commonwealth Edison, with his final years in office producing some of the company’s largest pieces of legislation. Prosecutors now allege that these laws only crossed the finish line because ComEd and McClain bribed Madigan with jobs and contracts for the speaker’s political allies.

Cousineau, ComEd’s top outside lobbyist, testified that McClain attended some of the working group meetings in the speaker’s office on major legislation the utility was pursuing. That legislation included the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2011, also known as “Smart Grid,” and the “Future Energy Jobs Act” of 2016.

Pressed by Schwartz, Cousineau said he did not know “exactly why the speaker invited McClain to a staff meeting in early 2015 on the energy legislation that would eventually become FEJA,” but said he remembered McClain “talking about the company’s interests.” in his speech. capacity as a lobbyist for ComEd.

“But he certainly also understood the needs and concerns of the speaker and was a trusted advisor to the speaker over the years,” Cousineau said. “So again, (he) wore both hats.”

Cousineau also spent much of his time on the witness stand Wednesday, describing the anxious final days and weeks before FEJA passed the General Assembly in December 2016. Two previous ComEd affiliated witnesses have already recounted the months of work involved in negotiating both EIMA and FEJA . The witnesses said that while they never believed Madigan guaranteed passage of either bill, they viewed his willingness to lend out his top lawyers for extended negotiations as a positive sign — even if those lawyers played hardball with the utility.

Those negotiations on the FEJA bill continued until the eleventh hour, they said. But at some point before lawmakers passed the legislation, Cousineau said he realized FEJA would not have the votes to pass in the House of Representatives. Reacting to the news, Cousineau said Madigan had instructed him to “work on the bill” to secure enough votes for passage.

Ultimately the bill was passed three more votes than was necessary in the House of Representatives, even though Madigan was one of six representatives listed as not voting. After passage through the Senate, then Governor. Bruce Rauner quickly signed it into law.

Cousineau’s testimony ventured into McClain’s involvement with the Democratic Party of Illinois, which essentially served as a campaign arm for Madigan’s House Democratic caucus during the decades the speaker was party chairman. In addition to his government job in the speaker’s office, Cousineau was also paid by the DPI, where he eventually served as the party’s political director.

Some of the names Cousineau identified — including campaign workers from Madigan’s power base in his hometown of the 13th Ward on Chicago’s Southwest Side — set the table for further evidence and testimony heard in last year’s “ComEd Four” trial. In that trial, former 13th Ward precinct captain Ed Moody testified that he was given a disability contract with ComEd primarily as payment for his canvassing for Democratic candidates.

And before trial, Cousineau began testifying about working with McClain on gambling legislation in the spring of 2018 — more than a year after McClain officially stopped lobbying. When asked what business McClain had in negotiating gambling bills without being a registered lobbyist, Cousineau said he believed McClain was involved at Madigan’s request.

During Mapes’ trial last summer, state Rep. Bob Rita, D-Blue Island, testified that Madigan told him in 2013 that he would take over as the caucus’ primary sponsor and negotiator on all gambling issues. As Rita left the speaker’s office, he said McClain was standing on the other side of the door and Madigan told him, “He’ll escort you.”

Rita, who began testifying in the current trial late last week, did not return to the witness stand on Monday and his absence has not been explained since.