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* Capitol News Illinois…

[O]n Wednesday, after three months of listening to testimony followed by a marathon week of closing arguments, the lead prosecutor in Madigan’s corruption trial presented that idiom to jurors before they were finally released to deliberate.

In a final attempt to weaken defense attorneys’ arguments over the racketeering, bribery and other corruption allegations against Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu told jurors that Madigan and McClain were neither “stupid” nor “beginners.”

“Mr. Madigan and McClain are adept at making sure Mr. Madigan’s fingerprints are not left at the scene,” Bhachu said of an episode involving a proposed land deal that forms the basis of five charges against the defendants. “They’re not playing checkers. They’re playing chess. And the two of them are grand masters of corruption.”

It was a line Bhachu used nearly two years ago in closing arguments in a related trial in which McClain and three other former executives and lobbyists for electric utility Commonwealth Edison were charged with bribing Madigan.

* Sun-Times…

When Michael J. Madigan’s longtime friend penned a retirement letter in 2016, he compared the record-breaking Illinois House speaker to Chicago’s famous “Boss” mayor, the late Richard J. Daley.

Michael McClain wrote that “Illinois is a great state because of your hand on the rudder, and you know instinctively now, just like Richard J. Daley, when to start, slow or turn off the engine.” […]

“He also had something else in his hand,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said. “He had the trust that was placed in him by each and every member of the public. But in guiding that ship, if you will, Mr. Madigan abused that trust. He lost his way. He was blinded by profit. By power. By his desire to stay in power.”

Madigan threw that trust “overboard, abandoned it,” Bhachu said. And, in the final argument in Madigan’s four-month trial, Bhachu told the jury “you have the evidence” to hold Madigan accountable for “that sunken trust.”

* Courthouse News Service…

Madigan and McClain’s attorneys, during their closing arguments, attacked Solis’ credibility. Madigan’s attorney Dan Collins went so far as to call him a “malignant tumor at the heart of this case.” […]

They pointed out that Solis testified he feigned his interest in the state board job as part of his undercover work. In a secretly recorded June 29, 2017 conversation, Solis also asked an uncertain property developer named Andy Cretal if there would be a “possibility” for Madigan to get legal work from his company ZOM Living’s “Union West” apartment project.

Bhachu, on Wednesday, countered that Madigan had plenty of chances to walk away from dealing with Solis — especially after June 23, 2017, when in another conversation Solis implied the Union West developers understood development “works” via quid pro quo arrangements. Madigan also continued helping Solis find a state board job in 2018, even after Solis told the then-speaker “I’ll continue to get you legal business” that June.

“Use your common sense here,” Bhachu told the jurors during his rebuttal closings on Wednesday.

* Today’s jury update…

The jurors are asking for more highlighters, sticky notes, white-out, etc.

"Apparently there's some kind of arts and crafts going on," Judge Blakey says.

They also inform the judge they'll break for lunch at noon.

— Jon Seidel (@SeidelContent) January 30, 2025

* Tribune…

The panel, which was selected anonymously, also announced they had elected Juror 16 as their foreman, a white man who appears to be in his 40s or 50s who said during jury selection he was born and raised in Chicago’s 19th Ward on the Far Southwest Side, where he still lives.

His parents were close friends with the previous 19th Ward alderman, Virginia Rugai, he said. He also knows the current alderman, Matt O’Shea, but does not discuss city operations or personal matters with him, he said.

The juror also said he had not done much political work apart from voting, and his recent contact with the ward office was limited to getting a block party permit. He works as an insurance underwriter and has three children, he said.

Juror 16 also said during selection that he did not want to be on the panel.

* More…

* WTTW | A Jury Will Now Decide Michael Madigan’s Fate. Here’s a Breakdown of the Landmark Corruption Case: After more than three months of testimony and arguments, a 12-person jury began deliberations Wednesday in the landmark corruption trial of powerful former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and his longtime right-hand man Michael McClain. Closing arguments began last week, 16 weeks after jury selection and opening statements got underway on the 12th floor of the Dirksen Federal Court Building in downtown Chicago.