‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’: Secretly recorded videos show ComEd lobbyists discussing alleged bribery scheme

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’: Secretly recorded videos show ComEd lobbyists discussing alleged bribery scheme

By HANNAH MEISEL 
Capitol News Illinois 
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com 

CHICAGO – Longtime Commonwealth Edison contract lobbyist Jay Doherty thought he was merely reminiscing and giving advice to a colleague and friend in a February 2019 meeting set up by ex-ComEd executive Fidel Marquez. 

But Marquez was wearing a hidden camera, having just a few weeks prior agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation of the utility’s alleged bribery of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. FBI agents had paid a 6 a.m. visit to his mother’s house where he’d been staying in Chicago. 

“This is just you and me talking,” Doherty told Marquez, detailing how he’d been paying a handful of allies close to Madigan through his lobbying contract with the utility for years. “I don’t even know who else knows this.” 

But Marquez’s camera ensured his conversation with Doherty would not stay between the two of them. On Tuesday, a federal jury watched the video along with an audience in a Chicago courtroom, with both Doherty and Marquez looking on. 

Doherty is one of three ex-ComEd lobbyists accused of orchestrating a yearslong bribery scheme to curry favor with Madigan, along with former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore. On Tuesday, Doherty and Pramaggiore, along with ex-lobbyists and codefendants Mike McClain and John Hooker, sat stone-faced while the video played on several TV monitors in the courtroom. Marquez was on the witness stand for a second day of questioning by prosecutors. 

Much of Monday and Tuesday centered on Doherty’s longstanding arrangement in which he used a substantial portion of his monthly lobbying stipend from ComEd to pay men close to the powerful House speaker anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 per month.  

But the long-running arrangement was potentially hitting a snag: Pramaggiore had been promoted from her position as ComEd’s CEO that past summer, and her replacement, Joe Dominguez, was a former federal prosecutor from New Jersey. 

As a newly minted cooperating witness in the government’s investigation, Marquez set up meetings with Doherty, McClain and Hooker – and a phone call with Pramaggiore – with dual purposes. The first goal was to get them to acknowledge the subcontractors did little to nothing on the company’s dime and were just a favor to Madigan. 

The second goal was to address the possibility that Dominguez would object to the arrangement, and Marquez was seeking advice from Pramaggiore, McClain, Hooker and Doherty on how to explain the subcontractor arrangement to Dominguez. 

After Marquez asked Doherty point blank what the subcontractors do, Doherty responded, “not much,” and explained that he barely even knew any of them, aside from his newest acquisition, former Chicago Alderman Mike Zalewski. 

But he did give Marquez a piece of advice: 

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with those guys,” Doherty said. “…And to keep Mike Madigan happy, I think that’s worth it.” 

In the video, Doherty recounted how the first of the subcontractors – former Chicago Ald. Frank Olivo – came on board with him years earlier.

“John Hooker calls and said, ‘Jay, I got a sub(contractor) for you…Olivo,” Doherty recalled. “‘We’re going to pay him every month and you just —’

Doherty held up four fingers to indicate the $4,000 monthly stipend Olivo would be paid out of what would eventually become Doherty’s $37,000 per month lobbying contract with ComEd. Doherty would eventually add two of Madigan’s top precinct captains from the speaker’s 13th Ward political base on Chicago’s southwest side: Ray Nice and Ed Moody, at $5,000 and $4,500 monthly, respectively. Zalewski was the last addition after his retirement from the Chicago City Council in the summer of 2018, at $4,000 per month.

In a separate lunch a couple weeks prior to the meeting with Doherty, Marquez secretly recorded Hooker – his direct predecessor at ComEd – at Chicago’s Union League Club.

Federal agents had directed Marquez to schedule the meeting with Hooker on the pretense that Marquez was looking for career advice, though he also sought Hooker’s counsel on how to approach Dominguez about the subcontractors.

“Well, I was the one who…I had to explain it to Frank,” Hooker said in the video where only the top of his head made an appearance most of the time.

Marquez testified Hooker had been referring to Frank Clark, the CEO of ComEd who directly preceded Pramaggiore. Hooker said he “couldn’t afford it,” referring to the cost of Doherty’s contract under his purview as senior vice president of external affairs at ComEd – the utility’s top internal lobbyist.

Doherty’s contract had been paid out of the CEO’s budget ever since, and Marquez told Hooker that he worried Dominguez wouldn’t approve the massive expense, which had ballooned to $400,000 annually.

Hooker’s advice was to have Doherty write a report on what each of the subcontractors did.

But Marquez received conflicting advice from McClain at a similar lunch meeting the two had in Springfield a couple weeks later.

“I would say to you, don’t put anything in writing,” McClain counseled in between bites of pizza at Saputo’s, a staple restaurant in Springfield’s political circles. “…All that can do is hurt ya.”

Marquez had testified Monday that he first learned of the subcontractors in June 2013, after he’d been in his role as ComEd’s top lobbyist for nearly a year and a half.

Marquez had received a forwarded email from Pramaggiore containing a request from McClain to move one of the subcontractors, Ed Moody, from his contract to Doherty’s “or someone else’s.”

“Can you clue me in?” Marquez wrote to McClain.

McClain responded with an “Of course…”

Marquez said he learned in a subsequent phone call that McClain had been paying Moody out of his contract for a while at that point, and that Doherty had been doing the same with Olivo and Nice. All three men, McClain explained, were valuable to Madigan.

“I didn’t expect for them to be doing any work for ComEd…because I knew they were brought on as a favor to Michael Madigan,” Marquez told the jury Monday.

In a recording of a wiretapped phone call played for the jury from May 2018, before Marquez was cooperating with the feds, Pramaggiore told McClain that she’d directed Marquez to add the not yet retired Zalewski to Doherty’s contract.

“I told Fidel to hire him, to get it done,” Pramaggiore said.

But though Marquez said he’d thought Zalewski could be valuable to ComEd while the utility renegotiated its franchise agreement with the city of Chicago, he never ended up doing that work. Negotiations were put on hold after then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he wouldn’t run for a third term.

Marquez explained that he’d come to understand the subcontractor arrangement as a way for ComEd to gain Madigan’s favor after years of disdain for the utility.

And nearly six years after learning about the subcontractors, it had become Marquez’s job to justify the arrangement to ComEd’s new CEO.

Eventually, Marquez said, he had that conversation with Dominguez while cooperating with the feds.

“‘There’s stuff I want to know, and there’s stuff I don’t want to know,’” Dominguez allegedly said, per Marquez’s testimony.

The trial continues at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

 

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide, as well as hundreds of radio and TV stations. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Leave a Comment





Local News

Oak Lawn Mayor Terry Vorderer rides in the Fourth of July parade in 2022. (File photo)

Oak Lawn seeks participants for Fourth of July parade

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Joe Boyle It may be spring, but it is not too early to talk about a summer parade. The Oak Lawn Village Board approved a resolution Tuesday morning authorizing the submission of a permit request to the Illinois Department of Transportation for the 2024 Fourth of July Parade. The resolution approves the…

Veronica Shaw

Sandburg welcomes new associate principal of instruction

Spread the love

Spread the loveConsolidated High School District 230 Board of Education is welcoming Dr. Veronica Shaw to Carl Sandburg High School as its new Associate Principal of Instruction. She begins July 1 and replaces Anita Huffman who was recently appointed as District 230’s Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services. With ample education leadership experience, Shaw is currently…

Sheri Cannataro, of Cannataro Farms, demonstrates the gear she wears to extract honey from a bee hive for visitors who stopped by to see her products at the Hills Chamber of Commerce Business and Community Expo Saturday at Conrady Junior High School in Hickory Hills. (Photos by Joe Boyle)

Residents warm up to Hills Chamber Business Expo

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Joe Boyle Spring has arrived but winter continues to leave its calling card. However, that did not prevent the Hills Chamber of Commerce from holding its 10th annual Business and Community Expo Saturday at Conrady Junior High School in Hickory Hills. While the temperatures were frigid and windy outside, the spirit inside…

Palos Park Mayor Nicole Milovich-Walters speaks about zoning codes at the March 25 council meeting. (Photo by Jeff Vorva)

Palos Park to tweak outdated village zoning codes

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva The village of Palos Park has no grand plan to change the village landscape. But officials want to modernize some of its zoning codes. “The village has not comprehensively updated its development regulations since 1960,” Mayor Nicole Milovich-Walters said at the March 25 village council meeting. “Due to this, there…

Ridgeland sd122 logo

SD122 psychologist resigns over Islamophobic posts

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Nuha Abdessalam A psychologist for Ridgeland School District 122 has resigned after hundreds of parents demanded she be fired for social media posts that were pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian. District Supt. Joseph Matise announced at a schoolboard meeting last week that Dr. Laurie Hoke had resigned. “Dr. Hoke will no longer be working…

CRR_NH

Clear-Ridge Reporter and NewsHound March 27, 2024

Spread the love

Spread the love

Mary Stanek

Will the month of March leave like a lion?

Spread the love

Spread the love. By Mary Stanek Your correspondent in Archer Heights and West Elsdon 3808 W. 57th Place •  (773) 517-7796 . The days are getting longer and slightly warmer. But my prediction of a few weeks ago–March is certainly not leaving like a lamb–may prove to be correct. A sure sign of spring in…

Peggy Zabicki

Robin sighting a sign of new beginnings

Spread the love

Spread the love. By Peggy Zabicki Your correspondent in West Lawn 3633 W. 60th Place •  (773) 504-9327 . I saw a robin the other day. This was the first sighting of the season for me. I remember my mom saying that the first robin of spring is a promise of new beginnings. May it be so. Is…

SRP-IMAGE-Logo

Thome sweet Thome: Nazareth baseball defeats Hall of Famer Jim Thome’s alma mater

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent The Nazareth baseball team took a road trip to the middle of Illinois and improved its record to 7-0 on March 23 by beating Limestone, 6-0. Limestone is the alma mater of former White Sox player and Baseball Hall of Fame member Jim Thome, who is an assistant coach…

SRP-IMAGE-Logo

Chicago Catholic League greats headed to Hall of Fame

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent A handful of area stars will be inducted into the Chicago Catholic League Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The list features Kevin Bracken (St. Laurence, wrestling), Kevin Carberry (St. Rita, football), Matt Macievic (De La Salle, cross county and track), Mike McGrew (Mount Carmel, football), Dan Nicholson (Brother Rice,…

Neighbors

SRP-IMAGE-Logo

Fire II tops Chicago City, advances to to second round of Hunt Open Cup

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent The Chicago Fire II picked up a late invitation to the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and beat Chicago City, 6-0, on March 20 in front of an announced crowd of 810 at SeatGeek Stadium. Defender Giovanni Granda and midfielder Vitaliy Hlyut each made their professional debut and scored…

Julia Bianchi heads back on defense shortly after delivering a first-half goal for the Chicago Red Stars on March 23 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview. Photo by Jeff Vorva

Red Stars top Seattle, open season with two wins for first time in franchise history

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent Last year’s last-place finish notwithstanding, the Chicago Red Stars have had a pretty rich history of success. The franchise has seven NWSL playoff appearances and has finished runner-up twice (2019, 2021), and prior to 2022 had finished no lower than fourth in the league ‘s regular season standings for…

SRP-IMAGE-Logo

College Football | Marian (Indiana) and St. Francis highlight Saint Xavier 2024 home slate

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent Saint Xavier has released its 2024 football schedule, which has the Cougars opening the season in Michigan. SXU will travel to the Detroit suburb of Southfield to play Lawrence Tech on Sept. 7 in a Mid-States Football Association crossover. The Cougars’ home opener kicks off at noon on Sept.…

Morton's Nariah Clay was named to the NCJAA Division II all-tournament team as the Panthers finished fifth in the nation. Photo courtesy of Morton College Department of Athletics

Morton College women’s hoops takes fifth in nation

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Correspondent For the second year in a row, the Morton College women’s basketball team finished fifth in the country. The Panthers closed out the 2023-24 campaign in Joplin, Missouri, with a 75-67 victory over Iowa Western on March 23 in the consolation championship game at the NJCAA Division II National…

Marist's Jack Meader (left) and Nathen Toth face each other during a block attempt against Downers Grove North in the semifinals of the Marist Invitational on March 23. Photo by Jeff Vorva

Boys Volleyball | Marist tops Lockport for Gold at RedHawks Invite

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Randy Whalen Correspondent Marist enjoys getting its season going by hosting a tournament that is now in its 20th year. They had a good time again this season, going unbeaten over five matches in two days to win the Marist RedHawks Invitational for the sixth consecutive time. The RedHawks ended the tournament…

CRRNH_CosmoPhotoMDWArmory_032724

City wants to buy armory at MDW

Spread the love

Spread the love. Has been vacant since 2017 .  By Tim Hadac For decades, it served military purposes, as well as Chicago’s gateway for Presidents stopping off in the city. But the Army National Guard Midway Armory, 5400 W. 63rd St., has been mostly vacant since 2017, when the Illinois Army National Guard ceased operations…

summit police logo

2 charged in Summit junkyard burglary

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Bob Bong Two men have been charged in connection with a break-in last month at the Pick-n-Pull used auto parts store and junkyard in Summit. George Ainalakis, 39, of Carol Stream, was arrested February 26 at the business, while Chad Wickert, 40, of Brookfield, was arrested March 13 by Hodgkins police. Police…

Mary Ellen Fox --Photo by Cosmo Hadac

A successful career serving thousands

Spread the love

Spread the love. By Tim Hadac Editor Clear-Ridge Reporter & NewsHound (708)-496-0265 . Most folks work for years at their jobs, expecting and receiving little fanfare, then retire quietly. Garfield Ridge resident Mary Ellen Fox planned to retire from her 30-year job in the City Clerk’s Office quietly; and she did, earlier this year. But…

Priscilla Steinmetz, of Orland Park's Bridge Teen Center, has fun March 7 at Congressman Sean Casten's desk in Washington. (Bridge Teen Center photo)

Casten secures $11M for district; invites Bridge Teen founder to State of Union

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Jeff Vorva Congressman Sean Casten is bringing some big bucks home. Casten (D-6th) announced that he helped secure more than $11 million in federal funding for local community projects. Included in that bounty is: $1.28 million to Evergreen Park for water main replacement. $500,000 to La Grange for storm and sanitary sewer…

Forest View Village Clerk Laura McGuffey (left) swears in Maria Guzman as a full-time police officer while Chief Bianel Zarate looks on. (Photos by Carol McGowan)

Forest View swears in new police officers

Spread the love

Spread the loveBy Carol McGowan The Village of Forest View has a new full-time police officer and a newly promoted corporal on the force. In front of a full-house at their February 27 Board of Trustees meeting, Clerk Laura McGuffey did the honors swearing-in Maria Guzman as a full-time officer, and promoting Officer Jorge Sanchez…