Transcripts of a 2018 federal wiretap of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan shows that he knew about a plan to arrange secret payments to a disgraced aid implicated in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
Madigan has always denied any involvement in the scheme in which Madigan’s lieutenant Michael McClain of Quincy allegedly arranged a group of lobbyists to make monthly payments to Kevin Quinn who had been ousted over his treatment of former Madigan worker Alaina Hampton.
Court documents show that a telephone call between Madigan and McClain on August 29th, 2018 show McClain telling his boss that he had put together a group of people willing to make monthly payments to Quinn until Quinn could find a job.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the call was referenced in a sworn affidavit by an FBI agent on May 13th, 2019 as federal agents sought a search warrant for McClain’s home in Quincy. A redacted version of the 136-page affidavit was unsealed Friday in federal court in Springfield.
The affidavit also sets out phone conversations that McClain had with several other lobbyists he attempted to enlist in the payments to Quinn.
The release of the wiretaps are the most detailed about the federal government’s dragnet into Madigan’s operations to date. McClain and Madigan were charged earlier this year in federal court for racketeering among other charges. McClain faces a separate indictment with three others on federal bribery charges, which is set to go to trial in September.