Capitol News Illinois

CHICAGO – It had been a tumultuous winter and spring for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan as he was forced to fire or distance himself from several top allies, three of whom were accused of sexual harassment at the height of the #MeToo movement.

But after the seismic events of June 6, 2018, when Madigan fired his longtime chief of staff Tim Mapes for alleged harassment, the issue began to fade as the summer marched on and Illinois political watchers’ attention shifted to the upcoming midterm elections.

In that moment of relative calm, retired Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain – whose longstanding friendship with Madigan granted him unparalleled access to the reclusive speaker – made a series of calls to other Madigan loyalists in late August of that year.

McClain asked each in that small group if they’d consider cutting monthly checks to Kevin Quinn, a political staffer Madigan had fired in February 2018 in response to allegations of harassment from Alaina Hampton, a 28-year-old campaign consultant.

Hampton alleged Quinn, 13 years her senior and the brother of Chicago Ald. Marty Quinn, had made unwanted advances and sent her inappropriate text messages amid an intense campaign season in the fall of 2016. At the time, they were both employed by Madigan’s political organization, which was also headed up by the alderman, a close political ally to the speaker.

Read more: Emails shown at trial detail Madigan world’s response to 2018 sexual harassment scandal

Since Quinn’s ouster, which coincided with a messy divorce, he had been unemployed and claimed in legal filings that he could not make his $1,085-per-month court-mandated child support payments.

But McClain had a plan.

“I decided I’d try to put some guys together to kick him a grand each, including me, for six months or until he – if he gets a job earlier than that, it would all terminate,” McClain said in a wiretapped phone conversation played for a federal jury on Thursday.

Monthly checks

While the call played through the courtroom speakers, the person on the witness stand was the same person on the other end of it: longtime Madigan staffer-turned-Springfield lobbyist Will Cousineau. In the call, McClain told Cousineau that the speaker eventually intended to help Quinn – though it wouldn’t be until Madigan secured another term as House speaker in January, and until the newly seated Democratic caucus approved his all-important House rules.

McClain told Cousineau that was “just between you and me.” But, as it turned out, the FBI was also listening in.

In fact, aside from the FBI agent monitoring the call from its Chicago field office, McClain also made the same assertion to at least two others that same day. Those calls weren’t played in court Thursday but were outlined in a 2019 affidavit used to get a judge’s permission for FBI agents to search McClain’s home and seize his cell phone.

The affidavit was unsealed in 2022, two months after prosecutors charged Madigan and McClain with bribery and racketeering in an indictment alleging the pair used the speaker’s political power to form a “criminal enterprise” that enriched Madigan and his allies. The trial wrapped its second week of testimony Thursday.

Read more: 4 decades after rising to power and nearly 4 years since his fall, former Speaker Madigan goes to trial

But the feds were still in an earlier stage of building their case on Aug. 28, 2018, when they captured a string of calls prosecutors would later use to allege a conspiracy. Cousineau was the third of at least six conversations McClain had that day related to lining up checks for Quinn.

McClain also made successful pitches to Tom Cullen, another longtime Madigan staffer-turned-lobbyist, in addition to former Assistant House Majority Leader John Bradley, who’d left the General Assembly to lobby, and politically connected lobbyist Michael Alvarez.

After those conversations, McClain had a call with Madigan. The recording, which was also outlined in the affidavit, was not played on Thursday, though prosecutors indicated earlier in the day that they planned to introduce it at some point during trial.

“So, Speaker, I put four or five people together that are willing to contribute to help a monthly thing, for the next six months like I mentioned to you for (Quinn),” McClain said before asking whether Madigan wanted to tell Ald. Quinn about the arrangement or if he should.

“Yeah, I think I ought to stay out of it,” the speaker replied.

McClain then called Ald. Quinn, who told him he also would “rather stay in the dark” about the payments to his brother.

The Chicago Tribune first reported the feds’ interest in the checks McClain arranged for Quinn in 2019, citing emails to the group thanking them for their “wonderful sacrifice” and warning Quinn to “keep all of this confidential.”

Madigan vehemently denied involvement in McClain’s efforts to pay Quinn after the Tribune’s report. And on Thursday, the speaker’s attorney Daniel Collins set the table for continued denial early in his cross-examination, asking Cousineau if he was aware of whether Madigan wanted to “stay out of it.”

“I’m not sure if I knew the speaker knew about it,” Cousineau said. “I was confused on that point.”

Collins pointed out that Cousineau could only rely on McClain’s version of events, further seeking to undercut what jurors heard in the August 2018 wiretapped conversation between McClain and Cousineau.

“As far as I’m concerned, except for the people that are signing on, no one else even knows about it except for our friend,” McClain said, using a nickname he frequently invoked when referring to Madigan.

In a second call with Cousineau, McClain said Madigan and Ald. Quinn “know I’m doing something but they don’t know what yet.”

In all, Quinn received more than $30,000 in checks McClain lined up for him.

Will Cousineau, a longtime staffer for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and current Statehouse lobbyist, walks out of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse at the end of his second day of testimony in the corruption trial of his former boss on Wednesday, Oct. 30. Cousineau will return for more cross-examination on Monday. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)

Collins and his colleagues made a last-ditch effort to block any testimony or evidence related to Quinn before trial began on Thursday, but U.S. District Judge John Blakey sided with prosecutors’ argument that the episode is an essential part of the feds’ allegation that the “Madigan Enterprise” used the speaker’s power to enrich his allies.

McClain had also already thought through how to avoid unwanted questions from federal tax auditors about the arrangement, telling Cousineau that he would draw up a contract for the lobbyists who agreed to take on Quinn. In addition to that, McClain said Quinn could write a report about a handful of elected officials, laying out intelligence like “who their sugar daddies are.”

“I would have not only a contract in case the IRS checked us out, but we’d also have a piece of paper – a two- or three-page piece of paper for this report,” McClain said.

Cousineau was initially noncommittal about his ability to pay Quinn through his employer, Washington D.C.-based Cornerstone Government Affairs. But in a follow-up call a few days later, Cousineau said he’d “make it work,” then asked McClain if he could assign Quinn real tasks.

“He could listen to the committee hearing online and do a report for me,” Cousineau suggested. “I mean that would be a huge help to me – better than like the bulls— report.”

In McClain’s call to Quinn the day before, however, McClain assured Quinn that he could, in fact, recycle the same bogus report to all of the lobbyists who were about to send him monthly checks.

“You can give that same document to all five or six people,” McClain told him on a call outlined in the affidavit. “You don’t have to do six different ones.”

Cousineau testified on Thursday that he was “incredibly concerned” and could hear “the hesitancy in my voice about this entire idea” when he listened to the wiretaps. But others agreed to McClain’s terms immediately. One was surprised McClain was only asking for $1,000 or $2,000 per month for Quinn.

“Mike, that’s it?” the lobbyist asked in another recording outlined in the affidavit. “Oh f—, Mike, listen. $2,000 is done. Forget it. No problem. I thought we wanted to hit him with like 10 Gs a month somehow.”

Both Cullen and Bradley were already familiar with serving as a conduit for payments to Madigan allies. At the time of McClain’s request, Bradley was several months into an arrangement where he funneled checks from his lobbying contract at electric utility Commonwealth Edison to a pair of Madigan loyalists, while Cullen had done the same for one of those same political allies through his AT&T lobbying contract the previous year.

McClain explained to Cousineau that at one point, he had “maybe five consultants” attached to his lobbying contracts at Madigan’s request.

“And all they ever really did is give me pieces of paper,” he said. “He doesn’t do it very often but, you know, about every two years he’s got somebody that he’s got to take care of for a month or two.”

A few weeks later, McClain sent an email to Quinn reiterating the need for secrecy.

“These men are sticking their necks out knowing full well if it goes public before you are exonerated they will get the full blast from the ‘MeToo’ movement,” McClain wrote. “So, please honor the confidentiality.”

#MeToo hits Madigan world

U.S. District Judge John Blakey this summer ruled the sexual harassment allegations against Quinn would be sanitized to just the word “misconduct” during trial to avoid undue prejudice. However, Quinn’s episode on Thursday was introduced in the same context as evidence and testimony about sexual harassment allegations against those in Madigan’s orbit in 2018.

Prosecutors showed the jury a Feb. 2018 email McClain sent to Cousineau, along with Ald. Quinn, Mapes and another top Madigan staffer a little over a week after Hampton went public with her allegations against Quinn.

“If we want to protect and save MJM we cannot play punchy bags above the belt,” he wrote, using the initials for Michael J. Madigan. “It is time to be offensive.”

Because of Judge Blakey’s ruling limiting mentions of sexual harassment around Quinn, the middle part of the email shown to jurors Thursday was blacked out. But a fuller version was used as evidence last year in Mapes’ perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

McClain suggested Madigan’s inner circle feed stories to reporters about three others in Springfield who had rumored #MeToo issues of their own. The names were redacted but included a lawmaker who had allegedly cited his “open marriage” to hit on women.

“We cannot lose him,” McClain wrote of Madigan. “We cannot give Illinois to these guys. So, we have to play sort of by their rules.”

Asked Thursday who he understood “these guys” to mean, Cousineau cited then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who’d immediately pounced on the opportunity for a fresh angle of attack on his political nemesis after Hampton’s allegations.

Less than four months later, McClain and Cousineau shared an anxiety-ridden phone call the same day Mapes’ accuser went public and Madigan swiftly fired him. In the call, Cousineau suggested those close to the speaker retain a public relations firm that’s “dealt with real s—,” like former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

“We need to get somebody who’s really been in the thick of something big,” he said. “And it’s gonna cost us a ton of f—–’ money but if it saves him, then so be it.”

Cousineau, who spent 18 years working for Madigan, grew emotional later in the day when Collins probed the former staffer’s feelings of loyalty, asking if Cousineau agreed that Madigan was “hardworking,” “smart” and “kind.”

“Would you agree that you formed a personal bond?” Collins asked, citing Cousineau and Madigan’s shared experience of being adoptive fathers.

Pulling a tissue from the box in front of him, Cousineau whispered “yes” — while his longtime boss in the center of the courtroom kept his face blank.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

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