During Tim Mapes’ perjury trial last year, an FBI agent memorably testified Mapes’ boss, longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan, ran his political operation with a level of secrecy and a requirement of loyalty akin to an organized crime family.
In sentencing Mapes to 2 1/2 years in prison Monday, a federal judge used another well-worn mafia term to describe the possible motivation behind Mapes’ actions that led to his conviction for lying to a federal grand jury investigating alleged corruption in the former speaker’s organization.
Omerta.
“It’s the idea that you don’t rat on your friends,” U.S. District Judge John Kness said to Mapes shortly before imposing the sentence. “You knew what you were doing when you went into the grand jury and you lied. I don’t know why you did this. Perhaps this was out of some sense of loyalty, but if that’s the case, your loyalty was greatly misguided.”
The sentence following a three-hour hearing punctuated a stunning downfall for Mapes, who served for decades as Madigan’s abrasive and sharp-tongued chief of staff, as well as executive director of the Madigan-run Democratic Party of Illinois and clerk of the House, before being abruptly forced to resign in 2018 amid a sexual harassment scandal.
It’s also the latest in a string of legal developments stemming from the federal investigation into Madigan, the longest serving state legislative leader in the country whose own federal racketeering trial is currently set for October.
Before the sentence was handed down, Mapes, sporting a shaved head and dressed in a blue suit and burgundy tie, read a statement to the court saying he was proud of his accomplishments yet “humbled and remorseful” about his actions.
“For 30 years, I tried my best to serve the people of the state of Illinois,” Mapes said, sipping from a bottle of water before reading notes from a sheet of paper. “I never intended to be anything but a public servant … I tried in ways big and small to live my life as a good man.”
Mapes talked about his successes, particularly making the legislative trains run on time and a decade-long effort to improve access for the handicapped at the Capitol — part of a pricey rehabilitation once compared to the renovation of the Palace of Versailles.
“Our efforts tried to make life better for the citizens of Illinois,” he said.
Mapes also said he knows many people in Illinois “have lost faith in their government and that breaks my heart.”
“It is contrary to everything I have tried to do in my career, and it brings me sorrow,” he said.
Most of his statement was read in a matter-of-fact tone. Mapes’ voice broke a little, however, when he talked about his legal troubles being hard on his aging father, who is still working their farm in western Illinois.
In handing down the sentence, Kness said he struggled at a fundamental level to understand how Mapes found himself in this position.
“This is a very sad case to me because I don’t understand why you did what you did,” Kness said. “You were immunized in the grand jury and all you had to do was go in there and tell the truth.”
In rejecting a request by the defense for a sentence of probation, the judge said he could not ignore the need to send a message about public corruption and to public officials in Springfield. Kness noted that two relatively recent governors — Republican Gov. George Ryan and Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich — went to prison and Mapes’ boss is currently under federal indictment.
“The people of the state cry out for accountability,” the judge said.
Mapes listened to the sentence standing at a lectern with his back to the audience. He did not appear to have any reaction when the sentence was handed down.
The audience in the courtroom included three former House lawmakers: Joe Lyons, who often served as acting speaker and worked closely with Mapes during legislative debates; George Scully, a former House committee chairman who oversaw issues tied to the electricity industry and who later served as a Cook County judge; and Coy Pugh, a longtime lobbyist and former state representative.
Outside of the courtroom, Scully acknowledged the jury decided Mapes had committed the acts he was accused of, but said that “he is still my friend.”
As part of the sentencing, Mapes was ordered to report to prison by June 11. Following the hearing, Mapes huddled with his attorneys and relatives for more than half an hour before leaving the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. Asked if he could comment, Mapes gave a thumbs-down. His lead attorney, Andrew Porter, also had no comment.
Mapes, 69, was convicted in an August trial of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice charges alleging he lied to a grand jury in 2021 in a failed attempt to protect Madigan from a widening political corruption investigation.
When he went in for his interview, Mapes had been immunized by the U.S. attorney’s office, meaning he could not be prosecuted for what he said as long as it was the truth.
In its decision, the jury found Mapes had lied on every occasion alleged by prosecutors in the indictment, which consisted mostly of a series of “I don’t recall” answers to questions about “assignments” Madigan handed down to his longtime confidant, Michael McClain.
In May 2023, McClain was found guilty along with three others in a bribery conspiracy to funnel payments from Commonwealth Edison to Madigan associates in hopes of gaining the speaker’s influence over the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.
Madigan lost the speakership and resigned his House seat in 2021, a year before being indicted along with McClain in a separate racketeering case alleging Madigan ran a criminal enterprise that used his power of elected office to shake down ComEd and AT&T and a real estate developer in Chinatown.
The trial for Madigan and McClain was supposed to start in April but was delayed six months after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review an Indiana case involving the same federal bribery statute.
In Mapes’ case, meanwhile, prosecutors had asked he be sentenced for up to about five years in prison, arguing in a recent court filing that Mapes’ lies “were calculated to thwart the government’s sprawling investigation of a series of unlawful schemes calculated to corrupt the government of this state at the highest levels.”
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Diane MacArthur and Julia Schwartz wrote in their filing that when a seasoned public servant like Mapes “makes the calculated and deliberate decision to lie in the grand jury, the criminal justice system, and our entire democracy, is threatened.”
In her argument Monday, Schwartz said Mapes “chose to dance around the edges” in his grand jury testimony despite being granted immunity by prosecutors. In doing so, she said, Mapes placed his loyalty to Madigan above all else.
“Had Mr. Mapes told the truth, he would have been a great witness for the government,” Schwartz said. “He was on the inside. … He knew the way Speaker Madigan took care of people with jobs and favors. He knew McClain was in on closed door meetings.”
In asking for probation and community service for Mapes, his attorneys said their client never stood to personally benefit from any of his alleged misstatements and that while he accepted the jury’s verdict he “disagrees with it and continues to maintain his innocence.”
Despite Mapes’ reputation among some in Springfield as a power-hungry bully, the defense characterized him as a down-to-earth family man who rose from humble beginnings and was always “looking out for the little guy.”
In arguing to keep Mapes out of prison, Porter said Mapes was a “product of downstate Illinois” who “learned at a very young age the importance of working very hard and respecting others, of speaking less and listening more.”
One of the “underlying mistakes” in Mapes’ trial, according to Porter, was the portrayal of Mapes as part of a “triangle of power” with Madigan and McClain that ruled over the House.
Porter argued Mapes and Madigan “were not friends,” that they didn’t vacation together and hadn’t had contact since “Madigan kicked him off the ship” unceremoniously when a clerk working with Mapes in 2018 accused him of sexual harassment and abusive leadership.
Borrowing from the hit musical “Hamilton,” Porter maintained Mapes was not aware of the alleged bribery scheme involving ComEd, Madigan and McClain, despite evidence that he had emailed with McClain extensively about it.
“He was not in the room when it happened — if it did happen — in terms of Madigan and McClain and their criminal schemes,” Porter said. “He wasn’t in those conversations.”
The defense also submitted dozens of letters to the judge from Mapes’ family, friends and former colleagues describing him as a mentor, someone who would always go out of his way to help others, even when no one was looking.
“He does so not for any reward, but because he believes it is the right thing to do,” Mapes’ lawyers said.
On Sunday, prosecutors objected to the letters remaining under seal, writing that a “significant number” of them are from current and former elected officials, including a congressman, as well as employees of state government and, in one case, a sitting state appellate judge.
“If there is any case for which public disclosure is warranted and appropriate, it is this one, given the interplay between the defendant’s status as a public official and the nature of the underlying grand jury investigation,” the filing stated.
At the outset of the hearing on Monday, Kness sided with prosecutors. He said he could not “see anything in the law that tells me I have to place all of these letters under seal.”
“There is a strong presumption of public access,” Kness said. “I think that the public has a right to know who wrote letters on Mr. Mapes’ behalf and what they had to say about him.”
The judge said he would allow the defense time to redact sensitive information such as addresses, phone numbers, minors’ names, and any particularly personal anecdotes. So the letters did not become public Monday.
Mapes spent years as Madigan’s chief of staff and executive director of the state Democratic Party, when, as the speaker’s premier gatekeeper, he strode the halls of power with an almost autocratic style. He also served as the clerk of the House, where he was known as a details-driven micromanager adept at keeping the legislative trains running.
Madigan dumped Mapes from all three positions in June 2018 after a staffer accused him of sexual harassment during a year in which the #MeToo movement cost the careers of several Madigan allies.
Whether Mapes gets to keep his pension may be a test of state guidelines. For a public official to lose a pension, a crime generally needs to be tied directly to his public job.
Although prosecutors wanted Mapes to cooperate about a scheme that stretched into a time when he was Madigan’s chief of staff, Mapes was convicted of lying to a grand jury after he left state government.
At stake is Mapes’ more than $154,000 annual pension, and state retirement officials are expected to ask the attorney general to review the matter.
In Mapes’ trial, Madigan, McClain and Mapes were described as the major players in a triangle of power that held sway over the longtime speaker’s Democratic House caucus, government operations and major grip on statewide politics.
Mapes’ attorneys argued at trial that Mapes did his “level best” to provide truthful answers in his grand jury testimony. They also accused prosecutors of asking open-ended questions and failing to provide Mapes with corroborating materials that might refresh his recollection of years-old conversations.
A slew of Democratic Springfield insiders lined up to testify for the prosecution, describing McClain as one of Madigan’s closest advisers, who had served with Madigan in the state legislature decades ago and had singular access to the speaker as a lobbyist for ComEd.
It was also well known around the Capitol that McClain continued to do sensitive work for the speaker after McClain’s retirement from lobbying in 2016, according to testimony.
Prosecutors also played for the jury multiple wiretapped calls where Mapes was captured talking with McClain about issues he claimed in the grand jury to know little or nothing about.
Among them was a Madigan-orchestrated plan to dump then-state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, who was potentially facing sexual harassment allegations. On one call from Oct. 31, 2018, McClain told Mapes he was going to wait until a batch of Lang’s fundraising checks cleared, “And then I gotta tell him that he’s gotta move on. That he has no future in the House.”
“Will you be wearing your big boy pants that day?” Mapes asked, laughing.
