Mike Madigan

After Michael Madigan spent several hours facing blistering cross-examination in his federal corruption trial, the former Illinois House speaker on Tuesday made a rare candid remark about the yearslong investigation that landed him on the witness stand in a Chicago courtroom.

The former speaker’s decision to testify will lengthen the already long trial, which was originally predicted to wrap before Christmas.

Former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo never had to appear in a federal courtroom between 2021 and 2022 as he was arraigned on tax evasion charges, later pleaded guilty and was then sentenced to six months in prison all via videoconference due to COVID-19.

After an extraordinarily short day of trial Monday, jurors may only remember one detail: those high up in Gov. JB Pritzker’s 2018 campaign had nicknamed then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan “Sphinx.”

For the second time in the span of seven months, then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan called up Chicago Ald. Danny Solis after reading about a proposed real estate development in the alderman’s ward.

The former chief lobbyist for electric utility Commonwealth Edison has spent the last week telling a federal jury how he bent over backward to accommodate hiring requests from former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

As chief lobbyist for electric utility Commonwealth Edison, Fidel Marquez had an expansive role that put him in charge of “approximately 130, 135 people.” But in June 2013, more than a year into that job, Marquez received an email about someone he was ostensibly supposed to be overseeing – but had never heard of.

Ex-ComEd lawyer Tom O’Neill’s 10 hours on the witness stand Monday and Tuesday marked a repeat performance from his appearance in last year’s trial, where he testified about all the same areas – and gave substantially similar answers.

The week began with Michael Madigan’s attorneys insisting no one had the right to speak for the speaker — that Madigan was “ignorant” of what people said behind his back. His chief ally, Michael McClain, is on trial with him.

It was a day of déjà vu at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse Tuesday as veteran Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain sat at a defense table listening to opening statements in his second corruption trial in 19 months and prosecutors called their first witnesses.