“We got — we’ve gotta kill it. Period,” Madigan’s longtime confidant, Michael McClain, allegedly told ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore in a recorded call in May 2018. “The problem is, any day now, the budget is gonna suck all the oxygen out of the building ... and the members won’t be paying any attention to our lobbyists ... and Lisa Madigan’s gonna walk in and say, ‘This is my legacy legislation, please vote for me.
The May 2018 phone call described in the affidavit took place as the spring legislative session was winding down. That same day, McClain had emailed Pramaggiore and other ComEd employees to say, “a friend of ours” — which federal authorities say was a code phrase used for the speaker — had authorized McClain to “go ahead and kill it,” meaning Lisa Madigan’s legislation, according to the indictment.
Later, McClain made an “emergency” call warning several ComEd officials, including Marquez that the Lisa Madigan bill “has substantial legs,” meaning it had momentum to pass the legislature. Also charged was McClain, 74, of downstate Quincy, who is a former legislator and lobbyist whose connections to Madigan go back to their time in the General Assembly together in the 1970s.
In one recorded call from May 23, 2018, for example, McClain was quoted allegedly telling Michael Madigan’s son, Andrew, that he was frustrated by people complaining about being pressured to hire someone else as part of the state’s entrenched pay-to-play system. Andrew Madigan has not been charged with wrongdoing. But the indictment against his father alleged that in August 2018, the then-House speaker asked Ald. Daniel Solisduring a meeting about the alderman’s potential appointment to a lucrative state board.