Four former ComEd executives and lobbyists are on a clear path to sentencing for their conspiracy aimed at ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, despite a last-minute challenge to their convictions and President Donald Trump’s review of a key law in the case.
Madigan ally Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, ex-ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and onetime City Club President Jay Doherty are all set to be sentenced this summer. A jury found them guilty more than two years ago, in May 2023.
On Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker told U.S. District Judge Manish Shah that officials in Washington, D.C., had rejected a challenge to the convictions based on Trump’s ordered review of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The former executives and lobbyists were found guilty of four counts tied to the corrupt practices act, accusing them of falsifying ComEd’s books and records. Defense attorneys objected earlier this year to setting summer sentencing dates, stressing that the review could come out in their favor.
Separately, the defense attorneys had also recently challenged the convictions under the U.S. Supreme Court’s March decision revolving around the 2022 conviction of former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson.
The high court undid a lower court ruling in Thompson’s case, finding that a law he’d been convicted under outlaws false statements but not misleading ones. Shah on Wednesday rejected the argument that the convictions for falsifying ComEd’s books should therefore fall.
Shah said “it’s not a true statement” to say ComEd purchased services from Doherty’s consulting firm when it was, in part, “a pass-through” for a “stream of benefits for Mr. Madigan.”
“The evidence was more than sufficient to prove that object of the conspiracy,” Shah said.
The ComEd conspiracy case has now mostly survived two rulings by the Supreme Court, as well as Trump’s review of the corrupt practices act. Sentencings in the case are set to begin July 14 with Hooker.
The sentencings have been delayed more than a year, first knocked off track by the Supreme Court’s decision to review a corruption case involving James Snyder, a former mayor of Portage, Indiana.
The justices in that case found that a federal bribery law aimed at state and local officials does not outlaw after-the-fact rewards known as “gratuities.” That law also played a key role in the ComEd case, and Shah in March tossed convictions on four counts that had been tied to it.
The Supreme Court’s review of the Snyder case also delayed by six months the trial of Madigan. But in February, a jury found the former speaker guilty for his role in the ComEd conspiracy, as well as other crimes.
ComEd paid $1.3 million to five Madigan allies over eight years so that Madigan would look more favorably at ComEd’s legislation. The bills that passed helped take ComEd from a “dire” financial situation to record earnings.
Madigan faces sentencing June 13.
