CHICAGO – The day after Thanksgiving in 2018, then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis sat in powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s office to tell him what he’d privately known for months: after 23 years in the Chicago City Council, he wasn’t going to run for another term in the February election.
Solis thought Madigan “might be a little surprised” by his news. But the speaker, who’d wielded power for more than three decades in part by keeping tabs on his Democratic House members, instead just laughed. The eagle-eyed Madigan had noticed Solis hadn’t turned in the signatures all candidates must collect to get on the ballot on the first day of petition filing earlier that week.
“Well, I’m not surprised,” the speaker said before bursting into uproarious laughter.
Behind him, captured on the FBI-provided body camera Solis was now used to wearing as his cooperation with the feds was approaching 2 ½ years, sat an upright punching bag sporting then-Gov. Bruce Rauner’s face. The Republican, who spent his entire single term in office fighting with Madigan, had recently lost his re-election bid to billionaire JB Pritzker.
The video was played for a federal jury on Wednesday as the government wrapped up 14 hours of questions for Solis on the witness stand halfway through a trial in which Madigan is accused of bribery, racketeering and extortion.
Read more: ‘You know why I’m interested’: Wiretaps, secretly recorded videos show Madigan recruiting business to his law firm | ‘You shouldn’t be talking like that’: Madigan scolded alderman-turned-FBI mole for bringing up ‘quid pro quo’
After a conversational segue in which both Democratic power brokers expressed their skepticism of self-described “progressives,” Solis assured Madigan that he’d continue connecting the speaker with big-time real estate developers who might hire Madigan’s property tax appeals law firm. As chair of the city council’s all-important Zoning Committee, Solis had relationships with many deep-pocketed developers.
“There’s a hell of a lot of stuff going on in the South Loop … and there’s some in the West Loop,” Solis said of major high-rise developments planned for the two neighborhoods experiencing a construction boom at the time. “So I figure I can still help you a lot. And I’m committed for that.”
Madigan thanked Solis before pivoting to ask about when the alderman might want to get appointed to a state board – something FBI agents had directed Solis to ask the speaker for months earlier.
The alderman had told Madigan on three previous occasions that he’d intended to run again in 2019 – which Solis testified to a federal jury this week was a lie the feds wanted him to keep up – but leave office after half of the four-year term.
But now that he wasn’t running again, Solis’ hopes for a retirement gig had sped up – and Madigan was ready to accommodate.
“You should get me, like, a resume,” the speaker said. “Because I want to have a meeting with Pritzker the week after next.”
Madigan indicated that he wouldn’t even have to put Solis’ desire to get appointed to one of two high-paying state boards in writing, but did “want to let Pritzker know what’s coming,” saying the speaker’s office was already sending the governor-elect names for hiring consideration.
When Solis mentioned he’d wanted to get his daughter’s name on a separate list being put together by the Latino business community for the Pritzker camp, Madigan offered to pass her resume along, too.
On the phone a week later, Solis told the speaker the two resumes would be sent over soon. Two days later, the alderman’s assistant sent them to Madigan’s secretary.
Before Solis took the witness stand last week, an FBI agent in charge of the government’s sprawling corruption investigation – which stretched well beyond Madigan – testified the last time Solis and Madigan spoke was in early December of 2018.
In January 2019, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Solis had been working as an FBI mole since mid-2016 and had secretly recorded influential figures including powerful Chicago Ald. Ed Burke.
Like Madigan, Burke was a property tax attorney, and had been milking his colleague for introductions to real estate developers all while Solis was wearing a wire. Burke last year was convicted in his own bribery trial and is currently serving a two-year prison sentence.
Burke’s name came up on Wednesday when Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur played wiretapped phone calls from September and October 2018. Madigan had asked Solis about a property he’d read about that real estate developer Harry Skydell had recently purchased in the heart of Chicago’s Loop, telling the alderman it “might be an opportunity for me.”
Weeks earlier, Solis had brought Skydell to meet with Madigan and his law partner in an episode jurors heard about on Tuesday. Now, Madigan was hinting that Solis call Skydell to ask about whether he’d consider hiring the speaker’s law firm to handle property tax appeals for the new property.
When Solis reached Skydell a week or so later, the alderman said Madigan was interested in taking on the work.
“That’s the property that Burke has,” Skydell said , prompting laughter from both him and Solis. “That’s the property I gave to Burke.”
But in a meeting at Madigan’s law office later that month, Solis told Madigan the business was his.
“I’ve got good news,” Solis said. “I talked to Harry, he’s on board. He’s gonna give you that project.”
“Was that true?” MacArthur asked Solis on Wednesday after they’d viewed the secretly recorded video.
Solis confirmed that it wasn’t. When asked why he misrepresented the project’s viability to Madigan, Solis said what he’d told MacArthur several times over the course of her direct examination:
“I was under the government’s instruction,” the former alderman replied.
That FBI direction is sure to receive scrutiny when trial resumes after the holiday weekend as defense attorneys for Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime Statehouse lobbyist and friend Mike McClain, begin their cross-examination of Solis.
As the parties filed out of the courtroom Wednesday, the Madigan and McClain families wished each other a happy Thanksgiving.
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.
