‘This dog will not hunt’; Feds say Supreme Court ruling has no impact on Madigan bribery allegations

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent interpretation of a key anti-corruption law does not dismantle the sprawling racketeering case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, which should proceed to trial in October as scheduled, prosecutors argued in a court filing Monday.

“This dog will not hunt,” prosecutors wrote about arguments by Madigan’s attorneys that the high court’s decision in June scaling back a key federal bribery statute in June means the indictment against the former Democratic powerhouse should be gutted.

The 113-page response urged U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey to reject the motion by Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime confidant Michael McClain, to dismiss the main counts in the case, as well as their separate requests for grand jury minutes and a bill of particulars detailing more specifics of each alleged bribe.

“There is no basis to dismiss the indictment, and no basis to require disclosure of any secret grand jury material to the defendants,” prosecutors wrote. “Defendants’ pretrial motions should be denied and the matter should proceed to trial as scheduled.”

The Supreme Court ruled in the case of former Portage, Indiana Mayor James Snyder that the federal bribery statute commonly known as “666” after its number in the criminal code applies only to bribes agreed to in advance of an official action and does not criminalize gratuities — that is, something given to a public official as thanks for an action they already took.

But, prosecutors wrote, there is plenty of evidence Madigan engaged in a long-running conspiracy to enrich himself, including standard quid-pro-quo bribery, not just isolated instances of corrupt gratuities.

The Supreme Court’s decision does not affect prosecutions “that target schemes that involve a stream of benefits over time that are offered or received for official action,” they wrote.

Prosecutors also brushed off the extensive pretrial filings as an attempt by Madigan and McClain “to prevent a jury from considering their conduct and holding them accountable for their gross abuses of power.”

“As the defendants would have it, nearly every single criminal statute targeting corruption referenced in the superseding indictment, including decades-old corruption measures passed by both the United States Congress as well as the Illinois General Assembly — a body which Madigan himself helmed for nearly forty years no less — is either unconstitutional or incomprehensible,” the prosecution filing stated.

The Snyder decision was the latest in a string of Supreme Court cases curtailing what the court has seen as overly broad federal anti-corruption statutes. The ruling drew criticism from proponents of good government, who worried the sweeping ruling would loosen the guardrails in a city and state where corrupt public officials have marched steadily to federal prison.

Defense attorneys have until Aug. 5 to file one more response before Blakey issues a ruling.

Madigan, 82, who gave up his legislative seat when toppled from the speakership in 2021, faces charges alleging he ran his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise while utility giants ComEd and AT&T put his cronies on contracts requiring little or no work.

ComEd allegedly also heaped legal work onto a Madigan ally, granted his request to put a political associate on the state-regulated utility’s board and distributed bundles of summer internships to college students living in his Southwest Side legislative district.

The superseding indictment also accused Madigan and McClain of scheming to obtain business for Madigan’s private law firm by trying to orchestrate the sale of a parcel of state-owned land to a developer looking to build a hotel in Chinatown.

Blakey has emphasized repeatedly that even though the Supreme Court threw a wrench into the Madigan case, the judge wants to keep matters on track for its scheduled Oct. 8 trial date. Earlier this month, prosecutors said they do not intend to seek a superseding indictment against Madigan, and neither side wants to delay the trial.

In their motion to dismiss, Madigan’s attorneys focused largely on the ComEd allegations, arguing that several counts in the indictment allege ComEd hired people as a favor to Madigan weeks or years after the House voted on key legislation regarding the utility. That could only be a show of thanks from ComEd to Madigan after the fact — the exact kind of conduct the Supreme Court decided is legal, the defense wrote.

But, prosecutors noted Monday, the Supreme Court’s decision made clear it is still illegal for a public official to agree “to a future reward for a future official act.”

And viewed in context, Madigan’s actions were clear-cut bribery, and the charges are valid under the long-standing “stream of benefits” theory that criminalizes running schemes of corrupt exchanges over time — in Madigan’s case, they allege, it stretched over eight years.

“The allegations of the indictment demonstrate that ComEd’s efforts to bribe Madigan in exchange for his official action were in fact successful; after ComEd started showering Madigan with valuable benefits, ComEd’s legislation began to move,” prosecutors wrote. ” Indeed, the fact that ComEd continued the payments for years strongly suggests they were satisfied with the agreement they had struck with Madigan.”

The Snyder decision, meanwhile, came down more than a year after the conviction of McClain and three other former ComEd executives and lobbyists on bribery conspiracy counts involving the alleged scheme to influence the speaker.

Sentencings in that case have been delayed indefinitely as defense attorneys have claimed the convictions will not stand in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com