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As the bombshell federal investigation into then-House Speaker Michael Madigan was heating up two years ago, prosecutors handed Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes the ultimate free pass, albeit with one crucial string attached.
Granted immunity, Mapes was assured he would not be charged as long as he told the truth to a federal grand jury. But he allegedly blew it.
According to prosecutors, Mapes lied repeatedly in his March 31, 2021, grand jury testimony in an ill-fated attempt to protect his longtime boss, claiming he couldn’t recall anything relevant about Madigan’s relationship with Michael McClain, the speaker’s longtime confidant at the center of the probe.
Those allegedly misleading statements had little effect, as Madigan and McClain were both indicted on racketeering charges last year alleging Madigan was at the top of a criminal enterprise aimed at enriching himself and his cronies and maintaining his nearly unfettered political power.
McClain was also convicted in a related case in May on bribery conspiracy charges involving a scheme by utility giant Commonwealth Edison to win the speaker’s influence over legislation in Springfield.
Now, Mapes, a key member of Madigan’s inner circle who for years served as the speaker’s borderline-tyrannical gatekeeper, is about to go on trial himself on perjury charges stemming from his grand jury appearance.
While Mapes may not be a household name outside the state’s political circles, his indictment marked an intriguing power play by the U.S. attorney’s office in what has become one of the biggest political corruption scandals in state history.
His trial, set to begin with jury selection Monday before U.S. District Judge John Kness, is being closely watched by many Illinois power brokers, from Madigan-connected lobbyists to current and former legislators who for years were beholden to Mapes due to his unique access to the speaker and his Democratic political spoils.
Mapes, 68, of Springfield, has pleaded not guilty to charges of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice. The latter charge calls for up to 20 years in federal prison, while lying to a grand jury carries a five-year maximum prison sentence.
His indictment in May 2021 caught many by surprise, particularly since he was granted immunity from prosecution by the U.S. attorney’s office and warned by the chief judge before his grand jury testimony that failing to answer truthfully could result in criminal charges against him.
Mapes has denied wrongdoing. His attorneys have maintained that federal authorities were attempting to squeeze him to give up information to bolster the prosecution’s case against Madigan.
His attorneys have said in court filings their defense will include that Madigan “kept information close to the vest” and “kept private conversations with others private,” and that McClain “often talked mysteriously, cryptically, and oddly — including about and when referring to Madigan.”
Mapes was asked more than 650 questions over hours of testimony in front of the grand jury and did his best to answer truthfully, his lawyers say, giving “high-level examples” of McClain passing along pieces of information providing his “perspective” to Madigan on “various matters.”
But when questions turned to Mapes’ recollection of specific phone calls and dates, his memory was admittedly hazy, according to Mapes’ attorney, Andrew Porter. But having a hazy memory isn’t a crime.
Key player for Madigan
In Springfield, Madigan often leaned on Mapes, who rose through the ranks as other key staffers moved on to public office, lucrative lobbying gigs or jobs in the corporate world.
He spent decades as Madigan’s chief of staff and executive director of the Madigan-run Democratic Party of Illinois. Madigan even anointed Mapes clerk of the House, giving him a trio of powerful positions designed to carry out the will of the nation’s longest-serving speaker.
One Democratic operative remembered that Mapes underscored his roles with a sign at his statehouse office that, borrowing from the “Wizard of Oz,” declared: “Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody, not no how.”
Often seen chatting privately with Madigan on the House floor, Mapes directed staffers with sharp-tongued orders and made impatient lawmakers check with him to see when or if they could call their bills for a vote. Both staff and elected officials grumbled about his condescending and abrasive style.
But Madigan suddenly ousted Mapes from all three of his positions in 2018. His unceremonious departure came within hours after an underling accused Mapes of sexual harassment and fostering a “culture of sexism, harassment and bullying.” Mapes disputed the accusations.
Rocked by a series of #MeToo scandals involving misbehaving aides, Madigan later gave in to pressure as rank-and-file lawmakers clamored for an outside examination of the Springfield culture and how sexual harassment complaints were handled.
The study, led by Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor who is the monitor of the consent decree the Chicago Police Department is now under and who recently investigated allegations of hazing in Northwestern University’s football program, found multiple criticisms of Mapes, including accusations of enforcing unwritten policies he made up on the spot, yelling and cursing, and making “explicit or indirect threats regarding people’s jobs.”
“Many of the people who said that Mr. Mapes did not yell at them or threaten their jobs said that they were told by their coworkers that it was only a matter of time before they had their ‘Tim moment,’” the report said.
In response, Mapes released a statement rebutting the allegations and defending his four decades of work in the General Assembly, including 25 years as Madigan’s chief of staff.
“The recent criticisms made against me do not truly appreciate the size of the responsibility of my position,” Mapes said then. “The daily needs of my position required constant attention in order to ensure the successful operation of our government. I made every effort to satisfy these demands.
“If my demeanor or approach to my job did not instill trust and a healthy work environment,” Mapes said, “I apologize.”
Evidence reveals power
In the “ComEd Four” bribery trial earlier this year, evidence revealed that Mapes’ sudden exit hit Madigan’s organization hard.
At one point, McClain was caught on a recording lamenting how the speaker had delegated so many campaign-related tasks to Mapes over the years and few knew what Mapes did to get things done.
McClain also explained that a list of go-to lobbyists was held so tightly that only he and Mapes had a copy.
When federal agents raided McClain’s home in downstate Quincy in May 2019, they found a handwritten document in one of McClain’s tote bags laying out his duties in assisting Madigan since McClain’s retirement from lobbying three years earlier.
“Diversion/Saving Speaker and Mapes,” read one topic header on the note, which was shown to the jury during the ComEd Four trial. The note went on to refer to “minutes/members/lobbyists/seeing advice/wanting to visit with MJM/Mapes.”
Other evidence from the trial revealed that efforts were made behind the scenes to give Mapes a soft landing in the business sector.
Prosecutors played a secretly recorded phone call between McClain and ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who at the time had been promoted to oversee Exelon, about hiring Mapes in a government affairs role with the utility.
Just weeks after Mapes’ ouster, Pramaggiore and then-ComEd Vice President Fidel Marquez were captured in another recording discussing whether Mapes was even employable.
“I keep thinking about how we can be helpful to (Mapes),” Pramaggiore said on the June 2018 call. “I think it’s hard to sort of do anything directly, but I think we could, you know, help him. There’s something out there. We just have to think about it.”
Months later, after Marquez began secretly cooperating with investigators, he recorded longtime ComEd lobbyist John Hooker talking about how Pramaggiore was still looking at “doing something for the enterprise and governmental stuff and bringing Mapes on.”
Hooker said Pramaggiore had indicated she wanted to “hide his contract in someone else’s,” and that they’d discussed putting him on as a consultant with McClain.
“McClain would like that,” Hooker said on the call, which was also played for the ComEd Four jury.
When asked about the scenario during her trial testimony, Pramaggiore said she thought Mapes’ experience in government affairs could help “create some common ground” for Exelon as it moved to create policy changes across subsidiaries in several different states.
“I liked him. I thought he was really smart,” Pramaggiore testified. “I thought Tim could help put that together for the utility.”
Pramaggiore said she was aware that Mapes had stepped down from his roles with Madigan’s organization after a couple of staff members “complained of bullying.”
“My understanding is he chose to resign and did,” Pramaggiore said.
In an unrelated court case, Madigan gave a deposition that provided a little different description of what led to Mapes leaving. Madigan testified he “told him to submit his resignation.”
Either way, Mapes was never hired by ComEd or Exelon, according to testimony.
Later that year, a legislative inspector general recommended that Mapes should never be rehired as a state employee either.
Pramaggiore, Hooker and McClain were convicted on all counts in May, along with consultant Jay Doherty, the former head of the Chicago City Club. They are all scheduled to be sentenced early next year.
Mapes, meanwhile, has been collecting his taxpayer-supported pension since July 2018, a month after he was ousted. Since then, his annual state pension has risen from just over $133,000 to just under $150,000 thanks largely to annual automatic 3% increases.
So far, Mapes has received pension payments totaling $711,282.
With very forgiving rules in Illinois, it is not even clear that he would lose his pension if convicted. Even though the issues revolve around what he knew while he worked for Madigan, Mapes may be able to keep the pension money flowing because his alleged perjury occurred after he left state government.
Challenge for prosecutors
The prosecution’s case against Mapes hinges on whether they can convince jurors that Mapes was being deliberately untruthful when he said he couldn’t recall specifics about McClain’s role in Madigan’s operation.
It’s a nuance that even the judge recently acknowledged was not your run-of-the-mill perjury prosecution.
“This is a somewhat unusual case in the sense that the government is in the position of trying to prove a negative — or disprove a negative, depending on how you look at it,” Kness said in a pretrial conference last week.
Trying to prove that Mapes’ lack of memory was a lie “requires a huge amount of context,” Kness said.
For that reason, Kness said, he will let prosecutors play numerous wiretapped recordings from the Madigan investigation that purportedly show Mapes not only knew exactly what assignments Madigan had assigned to McClain, he’d discussed them at length with McClain himself.
Defense attorneys had objected to the playing of many of the recordings, arguing they are largely hearsay statements that have little or no relevance to the indictment against Mapes.
Among the calls that prosecutors are expected to play is a February 2019 conversation in which Mapes allegedly talked to McClain about being approached by the FBI weeks earlier and how he later shared a memo he wrote about the encounter with one of Madigan’s criminal defense attorneys.
In the call, Mapes told McClain he’d given the attorney, Sheldon Zenner, the memo per a “request,” and that he was told to “report back in” to McClain, according to recent court filings.
At the end of the call, Mapes again said, “I’m just reporting in,” according to one prosecution filing. Prosecutors said Mapes was “clearly showing that he was intending to keep McClain in the loop, so that Madigan too could be kept in the loop” about the FBI meeting.
Mapes testified to the grand jury that he showed Zenner the memo in 2019 “only for informational purposes and because (Zenner) was a former assistant U.S. attorney,” the prosecution filing said.
“Mapes also said he didn’t ask McClain to pass any messages to Madigan about Mapes’ meeting with the FBI in 2019,” the prosecution filing said. “This testimony was false and misleading.”
At the pretrial conference, prosecutors revealed that Mapes conceded in his grand jury testimony that Zenner never represented him specifically, and that he’d reached out to him “to see if he had any recommendations” on what to do going forward.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz said there clearly was “some concern” that the FBI outreach had something to do with the ongoing corruption investigation that was in the news at the time.
That case involved then-Chicago Ald. Edward Burke, who was charged with bribery conspiracy in January 2019, and Burke’s former colleague, Ald. Daniel Solis, who had been outed as a government mole.
Mapes and McClain were essentially “comparing notes, trying to figure out what the government (was) up to,” Schwartz said.
In his grand jury testimony, Mapes was again asked, “You never were aware of anybody asking McClain to pass messages on?” Schwartz said, reading from a portion of the transcript that had previously not been made public.
Mapes allegedly answered: “Yeah I’m not aware of any. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.”
Kness ruled that the issue was “plainly relevant under the government’s theory” of the case, and that the evidence of Mapes’ outreach to Zenner was fair game.
“Whether it persuades the jury or not remains to be seen,” the judge said. “But it’s evident to me there was no attorney-client privilege between Mr. Mapes and Mr. Zenner.”
Zenner, who remains one of the lead defense attorneys on Madigan’s racketeering case, has declined to comment.
The indictment also alleges Mapes lied when he said he had no knowledge McClain had communicated with two unnamed state representatives in 2018 on Madigan’s behalf.
The Tribune has since reported that those two are state Rep. Bob Rita of Blue Island and former state Rep. Lou Lang of Skokie, both of whom testified for the prosecution at the ComEd Four trial and are expected to return to the stand to testify against Mapes.
In May 2018, McClain and Mapes had a series of calls discussing rumors that Lang, a longtime Madigan ally, allegedly harassed a female activist and discussed how to mitigate the damage to the speaker, prosecutors have said.
“Let me put you on with the boss. Okay?” Mapes told McClain, according to one prosecution filing. “So you’re going to inform him what you know and go from there.”
“This call demonstrates as clear as day that Mapes knew McClain communicated with Madigan in 2018, because Mapes sets up that conversation,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “It also is an example of McClain working for Madigan, helping get information to him about a brewing sexual harassment scandal.”
Defense position
Mapes’ attorneys, meanwhile, have argued in pretrial filings that prosecutors did nothing to help Mapes’ recollection of specific phone calls and dates in their questioning before the grand jury.
Afternoon Briefing
At one point, immediately before one of the answers that prosecutors say was a lie, Mapes told the grand jury he had no recollection of an event but could come back to it later if he was shown something and it “pops my memory,” the defense wrote in a motion last year.
“The prosecutor did not follow up on any of these matters — nor did the prosecutor attempt to refresh Mr. Mapes’ recollection on any specific subject matters that could ‘pop’ Mr. Mapes’ memory,” Porter said.
As part of their case, the defense plans to call an expert witness on human memory who is expected to testify that it’s common for people not to store memories about routine things.
The expert is also expected to explain that to jog one’s memory, “a person should be given information, such as by being shown documents relevant to an event and hearing contemporaneously recorded audio,” court records show.
Prosecutors objected to the expert, but Kness ruled last week that the witness can testify.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com