One of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s oldest and most trusted confidants was among four people charged Wednesday with orchestrating an elaborate bribery scheme with utility giant Commonwealth Edison that allegedly funneled money and do-nothing jobs to Madigan loyalists in exchange for the speaker’s help with state legislation.
Michael McClain, 73, of downstate Quincy, was charged in a 50-page indictment returned by a federal grand jury with bribery conspiracy and bribery.
Also charged were former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, 62, of Barrington; lobbyist and former ComEd executive John Hooker, 71, of Chicago; and Jay Doherty, 67, a consultant and former head of the City Club of Chicago.
The indictment alleged that beginning in 2011, the defendants “arranged for various associates” of Madigan — including his political allies and campaign workers — to “obtain jobs, contracts, and monetary payments” from ComEd even in instances where they did little or no actual work. Madigan is referred to in the charges only as Public Official A.
Awful criminal Democrats.
Old, very old Democrats. They should know better but they don’t.
This must be a new record – 10 paragraphs in until the Trib mentions Madigan’s party affiliation, though they did allude to it in paragraph 8. Of course, had Madigan been a Republican, that would have been mentioned in both the first sentence and the headline.
Seriously, Madigan should become governor so he can uphold the fine bipartisan tradition of Illinois governors going to prison.
ComEd………ComEd……….ComEd……….lemmeeseeheah, Jethro…..
Ain’t that the company that Billy Ayers’ Daddy ran for a decade or so?
Aw, geez. They report this as if the Chicago Way is something new.
ComEd has been at the apogee of political corruption for better than a century. They’re almost as infamous as those ballot boxes at the bottom of the Chicago River and the Illinois cemetery residents who faithfully vote Democrat.
The only reason something is being done now is because the wrong people didn’t get paid.