Feds set to rest case in Madigan trial; defense prepares to call first witnesses

CHICAGO – Though he wouldn’t get a formal diagnosis of dementia until a few years – and one felony plea – later, former state Rep. Eddie Acevedo told FBI agents and government lawyers in a September 2019 interview that he had memory problems.

Those memory issues made for confused and, at times, emotionally charged testimony this week when the government called Acevedo as one of its final witnesses in the trial of ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Prosecutors are set to rest their case Wednesday while defense attorneys gear up to call their own witnesses.

“I didn’t say I don’t know, I said I don’t remember,” Acevedo said at one point Tuesday morning as he and Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu tussled over an episode from around the time the FBI contacted him in 2019.

In the combined hour Acevedo was on the witness stand beginning Monday afternoon through Tuesday morning, Acevedo contradicted what he told the government in that 2019 meeting and testimony he gave to a grand jury in 2022.

In both prior instances, Acevedo admitted to not having done any work for the combined $142,500 in indirect payments he received from electric utility Commonwealth Edison and AT&T Illinois in 2017 and 2018 after he’d retired from 20 years in the General Assembly. Though Acevedo has not been charged with wrongdoing related to the alleged no-work contracts, he did serve six months in prison on a tax evasion charge uncovered during the feds’ wider investigation of Madigan and those close to him.

Prosecutors allege the no-work contracts were meant as bribes to Madigan as Acevedo was a key ally in the Latino Caucus. In exchange, the feds say, the powerful speaker helped the utilities pass major legislation. Madigan’s co-defendant, longtime Statehouse lobbyist Mike McClain, helped arrange those contracts, according to emails and wiretapped calls introduced earlier in trial.

But on the witness stand, Acevedo insisted he had performed work for AT&T, including attending meetings and hearings and reporting about those hearings to lobbyists for the telecom giant. The former lawmaker also claimed he provided intel about the Latino Caucus.

Over objections from defense lawyers and Acevedo’s attorney, U.S. District Judge John Blakey ordered Acevedo to testify after an interview in his chambers last week to determine his fitness to take the stand.

Though Madigan attorney Dan Collins’ warning that Acevedo’s testimony would be “an absolute mishmash of the facts” turned out to be right, prosecutors later tried to clean up the record by calling an AT&T lobbyist as a witness.

Michael Lieteau, who still lobbies for AT&T, denied that Acevedo ever reported back to him about work he was doing for the company during the nine months Acevedo collected checks for consulting work in 2017.

He also echoed comments other witnesses made about Acevedo earlier in the trial, saying Acevedo “did not have a good reputation within the General Assembly” and tended to drink too much in Springfield – on occasion falling off a bar stool or insulting people.

The feds also called on one of the FBI agents present for Acevedo’s September 2019 interview who testified that Acevedo said he didn’t complete any work product for those checks. Special Agent Kyle Scherrer also testified that he couldn’t find any work product from Acevedo after searching through thousands of pages of records from AT&T and ComEd.

But on cross-examination, Collins asked Scherrer about a report prepared for AT&T by a Washington D.C.-based political consulting firm in conjunction with Apex Strategy, which was owned by Acevedo’s son Michael. But Scherrer said he understood that Michael and his brother Alex were the ones who worked with the firm to prepare the report on the political landscape in Illinois.

“But do you know if Michael and Alex talked to Eddie in order to gain knowledge of the political landscape?” Collins asked.

“No, I wouldn’t know that,” Scherrer replied.

Collins also asked more deeply about Acevedo’s health issues, asking if he’d had memory problems dating back to his last full year in office in 2016. Acevedo affirmed that his symptoms began around then, saying he learned of a brain tumor that ultimately caused hearing loss in one ear.

“You sometimes forget your grandchildren’s names?” Collins asked after Acevedo acknowledged that one of his sons is now his caretaker.

“Yes,” Acevedo said.

When McClain’s attorney Patrick Cotter got his turn with Acevedo, his first question was whether the former lawmaker was “confident” in the memories he’d testified about.

“No, sir, that’s one reason why it hurts so much when he asked me about my grandkids’ names,” Acevedo said, tearing up. “It hurts me so much that I can’t remember their names.”

Cotter then asked Acevedo whether he ever asked his client for a no-show job.

“I never asked anybody for a no-show job,” Acevedo said.

“Did he ever offer you a no-show job?” Cotter asked.

“No,” Acevedo replied.

The jury already heard last week about a contentious April 2017 meeting between Acevedo and AT&T lobbyists in which the newly retired lawmaker became upset at the company’s offer to pay him $2,500 monthly for nine months. But after a phone call in which Acevedo allegedly told former Madigan staffer-turned-lobbyist Tom Cullen “f— AT&T, they can kiss my ass,” Acevedo accepted the deal.

In the next two months, lawmakers approved AT&T’s priority legislation – a law that would allow them to get out from under a 1930s-era requirement to maintain expensive aging copper landlines.

While the feds allege the effort was tied to Acevedo’s contract, defense attorneys insist it was due to years of groundwork the company put in prior to 2017, in addition to a sophisticated and hard-won lobbying strategy that resulted in overwhelming bipartisan votes.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Hannah Meisel

Hannah has been covering Illinois government and politics since 2014, and since then has worked for a variety of outlets from NPR affiliate stations to a startup newsletter. She’s a graduate of both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I’s Springfield campus, where she received an M.A. through the Public Affairs Reporting program and got her start reporting in the Capitol.