‘There’s something fishy here, don’t you think?’: Wiretapped calls
detail Madigan confidant’s confoundment over complicated land deal
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 [December 07, 2024]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO – It was the last day of the General Assembly’s spring
legislative session in 2018 when veteran Statehouse lobbyist Mike
McClain realized his bill wasn’t going anywhere.
McClain was officially retired but still took on “assignments” from his
longtime friend Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. But one
particular project he took on proved especially difficult.
In the fall of 2017, he began working with then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis
on what was supposed to be a relatively simple legislative maneuver to
transfer state-owned land to the city of Chicago.
For years, the state had leased the land out to a company that operated
it as a parking lot in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood. Solis wanted
the state to transfer the parcel to the city, which would then sell it
to a real estate developer interested in building a mixed-use apartment
complex. That sliver of Chinatown was in Solis’ 25th Ward.
When Solis met with McClain about the proposal in late 2017, Solis
agreed with McClain’s characterization that it was a “legacy” project
after the alderman revealed he may not run for city council again in
2019 after two decades on the city council.
McClain also recruited Nancy Kimme, a relatively new lobbyist, to work
with then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration on the effort.
Kimme spent years in GOP circles and served as chief of staff to the
late Judy Baar Topinka when Topinka was both comptroller and state
treasurer. McClain also involved Kimme to reduce the risk of upsetting
the deal if Rauner – Madigan’s political nemesis – found out the speaker
had any ties to the project.
But the team of statehouse veterans couldn’t get the routine land
transfer done, even after six months of work. They were confounded by
how the deal had become such a boondoggle. Even six years later, Kimme
still expressed a bit of that bewilderment Thursday as she testified
about the yearlong effort in Madigan’s federal corruption trial.
Kimme’s appearance on the witness stand came at the conclusion of the
seventh week of testimony in the trial. McClain was indicted alongside
Madigan in the case that extends to allegations of bribery involving
McClain’s biggest client, electric utility Commonwealth Edison, and AT&T
Illinois. Madigan and McClain are accused of running a “criminal
enterprise” benefiting the speaker and his inner circle – the basis of
racketeering charges against them.
Kimme and McClain had relied on Solis’ assurances that state Rep.
Theresa Mah, who represented Chinatown, supported the project. But when
Kimme finally approached her in mid-May 2018, she said she was opposed.
“She’s like, ‘This is a scam cooked up by Danny Solis. You know, people
in my district don’t like him,’” Kimme told McClain, relaying the
meeting in a May 16, 2018, phone call. “They’re trying to gentrify
Chinatown and take away its identity and put some big high-rise up in
the middle.”
They’d also been unable to get state Sen. Marty Sandoval to “calm down”
after he’d intervened, making his opposition known to the head of the
Illinois Department of Transportation. They’d tried to placate him by
dispatching state Sen. Tony Munoz to help their cause. They brought
Munoz on board by combining another land transfer Munoz wanted into the
same bill with the Chinatown transfer.
But it hadn’t worked; in fact, the day before session ended, Kimme had
gotten wind that Sandoval, who chaired the Senate’s Transportation
Committee, had escalated his opposition to threatening IDOT Secretary
Randy Blankenhorn.
“There’s something fishy here, don’t you think?” McClain asked Kimme as
they puzzled over the events of the last several weeks. “I mean, Solis
says Theresa Mah’s all in. Then you find out Theresa Mah’s not in. You
know, Tony Munoz’s supposed to be in charge of Sandoval, and we find
out, can’t do anything with Sandoval.”
McClain was, as it turned out, at least half-correct in his suspicions,
though he never imagined Solis had secretly been working as an FBI
cooperator for nearly two years at that point.
Solis, who chaired the city council’s influential Zoning Committee, had
become friendly with Madigan the previous summer after the speaker
called him out of the blue asking about a proposed apartment complex
project in Chicago’s booming West Loop neighborhood.
Both he and the FBI agent who’d been overseeing the feds’
still-unfolding corruption probe, which began in 2014, confirmed that it
wasn’t until Madigan’s June 2017 call to Solis that the investigation
shifted focus to the powerful speaker.
Solis offered to introduce Madigan to the developers so the speaker’s
law firm could pitch its property tax appeals services. After the
alderman brought the developers to a meeting at Madigan’s law firm the
next month, the two debriefed in the speaker’s private office. That’s
when Solis brought up the Chinatown project.
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A parking lot in the heart of Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Federal prosecutors allege former Illinois House Speaker Michael
Madigan pushed for a land transfer in order for developers to build
on the parking lot so he could eventually get the development’s
property tax appeals work for his real estate law firm. (Capitol
News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Prosecutors allege Madigan engaged in a bribe when he agreed to help
Solis get the land transfer in exchange for the would-be developers
engaging Madigan’s law firm.
But in secretly recorded videos and wiretapped phone conversations shown
to the jury while Solis was on the witness stand last week, McClain knew
of Solis’ intent months before Madigan did.
“So in the past I have been able to steer some work to Mike,” Solis said
in his first meeting with McClain in November 2017. “And these guys will
do the same thing.”
It wasn’t until late March 2018 that Solis explicitly told Madigan the
Chinatown developers would give him their property tax business.
After a sit-down with another real estate developer Solis brought to
Madigan’s office for a pitch meeting, Solis brought up the ongoing
Chinatown project. He told the speaker, “they’ll work with you on
property taxes.” In a follow-up call on the previous day’s meeting on
March 27, 2018, Solis again mentioned the Chinatown project.
“If you can take care of that matter in May, I’m confident they’ll
appreciate it and sign you up after May,” Solis said.
But there was no resolution to the issue in May. Just a few minutes
after McClain hung up with Kimme on that last day of session, he spoke
with Madigan and explained the “hurdle after hurdle” on the bill. In
addition to unexpected opposition from Mah, McClain surmised that
Sandoval’s interference had spooked Blankenhorn into an intractable
position.
“Yeah, sure, alright,” Madigan told McClain. “I mean, put the file in
the drawer for a while.”
The upcoming November 2018 election was likely to spell good news for
the effort, Kimme explained, as it appeared that Rauner would lose. That
meant the IDOT secretary he appointed would be out of a job – and out of
their way.
In a series of wiretapped calls made in the weeks leading up to the
election and lawmakers’ fall veto session scheduled shortly thereafter,
those involved strategized on how to get the bill passed before the end
of the General Assembly’s adjournment in late November of that year.
But despite last-minute negotiations on who could carry the legislation,
the amendment to transfer the land to the city never passed even “after
all of that,” Kimme testified Thursday.
Business leaders in Chinatown – even those who initially supported the
project – had registered their opposition with a petition drive in the
fall of 2018. After they collected some 3,000 signatures, then-Secretary
of State Jesse White threw his weight behind them, which Kimme testified
sealed the deal on the bill’s death.
Under questioning by Madigan attorney Tom Breen, Kimme said figuring out
what she’d referred to in one wiretapped call as a “crazy parking lot
disaster” had become “my Rubik’s cube.”
“Did you find it undoable?” Breen asked.
“I did,” Kimme replied.
“And that was because of miscommunication and bad information and petty
politics?” Breen asked.
Prosecutors objected to Breen’s question, along with his insinuation a
minute later that the situation was impossible as she’d been trying to
follow “a script written by” the FBI.
The comment harkened back to cross-examination of FBI Special Agent Ryan
McDonald last month when Madigan attorney Dan Collins accused the FBI of
creating a trap just to see if the speaker would fall into it.
“Just as you directed Solis to say false things to Madigan, the same is
true of other folks,” Breen said to McDonald, citing the involvement of
McClain and Kimme in the unsuccessful Chinatown land transfer. “So you
know that after Danny Solis told false information to Nancy Kimme, she
talked to Mike McClain about it.”
“Yes,” McDonald replied.
“That false information – it spreads, right?” Collins asked.
“I don’t know,” McDonald said.
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