(The Center Square) – U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois took the witness stand for a short day Monday at the public corruption trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and codefendant Michael McClain.
Budzinski, D-Springfield, has represented Illinois’ 13th Congressional District since 2023. The incumbent won her reelection last month. Before being elected to Congress, Budzinski was a special assistant to Gov. J.B. Pritzker. She worked as a transition team member when Pritzker was governor-elect in late 2018 and 2019. She provided political advice on downstate issues.
On the transition team, she helped pick about 1,500 candidates for state jobs, boards and commissions on Pritzker’s behalf. Pritzker had the final say on the picks.
The senior advisor to Pritzker recommended people for administrative jobs.
“We had a very thorough vetting process,” Budzinski said.
She sent Pritzker a copy of a so-called Sphinx list, a multi-page list of names and job and state board recommendations. Budzinski said “Sphinx” was a nickname used in Pritzker’s office for Madigan. Budzinski said she never understood the reason for the nickname.
“We gave serious consideration to these requests,” Budzinski testified, just as they’d give consideration to recommendations from other legislative leaders.
Last week, prosecutors played a recording from Nov. 30, 2018 of then-state Rep. Mike Zalewski, D-Chicago, telling McClain that he asked Madigan to consider his wife Carrie for a state board.
“I will tell you, to the Speaker, I asked him to think about Carrie to go to the Illinois Commerce Commission,” Zalewski said.
“Oh, OK,” McClain responded.
“She’s getting a little stale with her job right now. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love it. She loves it a lot, but Pritzker gets two picks in January, and the pay is the same. So, he wouldn’t get a story for bumping her pay,” Zalewski said.
Pritzker appointed Carrie Zalewski to the Illinois Commerce Commission in March 2019 and she served there until 2023.
According to the Illinois Comptroller’s Office, the annual salary for the position in 2022 was more than $140,000. Carrie Zalewski had previously served on the Illinois Pollution Control Board.
On Monday, Budzinski said she never hired anyone because they offered something of value to Madigan.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “That would be wrong and we have process, we would never do that.”
Taraleigh Davis, assistant professor of Public Law and Political Science at Bradley University, noted that attorneys for Madigan and McClain have focused on job recommendations.
“I think the defense team is really going to hone in on the prosecution trying to criminalize normal political activity, and that this is not quid pro quo. This is just the way things are and done,” Davis told The Center Square.
On cross-examination Monday, defense attorneys took Budzinski through the Sphinx list, pointing out cases where Madigan’s recommendations didn’t get the jobs he had requested. The Sphinx list generally had recommendations from Madigan and Pritzker. Budzinski also said she didn’t feel required to hire Madigan’s recommendations and wasn’t worried about backlash if she failed to hire one of Madigan’s picks.
She also said she only hired people who were qualified.
That’s in stark contrast to requests co-defendant McClain made to ComEd regarding summer intern candidates. In some cases, McClain, at Madigan’s request, asked for jobs for candidates who didn’t meet ComEd’s job requirements and asked if the rules could be changed for candidates from Madigan’s ward.
ComEd, a state-regulated utility, typically hired 100 to 150 college students for summer internships. Former ComEd executive Fidel Marquez, who worked undercover on behalf of federal investigators, testified in 2023 in a related trial that the company reserved six to 10 internships for candidates from the 13th Ward. Marquez previously testified that internship candidates from the 13th Ward weren’t subject to the same scrutiny or competitive hiring process as other paid interns. In some cases, Marquez waived grade-point average and other requirements for those internships.
During the 2023 ComEd Four trial where McClain, a former ComEd official and two other lobbyists were found guilty of corruption, prosecutors showed one intern candidate who had a 1.1 GPA, according to emails prosecutors showed the jury. When Marquez pointed this out to co-defendant McClain, McClain responded “Holy mackerel, even mine was higher than that number!”
Marquez testified that he considered requests from McClain to be directly from Madigan.
Budzinski was the only person to testify Monday as the trial continued into its 34th day. The judge allowed early release to all so he could attend the funeral of former federal judge Joel Flaum, who died last Wednesday.
Madigan and McClain are facing 23 counts of bribery, racketeering and official misconduct. Prosecutors allege that Madigan and McClain used Madigan’s public office to secure no-work or little-work jobs for their associates in exchange for advancing legislation favorable to ComEd.
The utility admitted in 2020 that it sought to influence Madigan by placing his associates into jobs requiring little or no work. ComEd agreed to pay a fine of $200 million and cooperate with the federal investigation in exchange for an agreement that prosecutors drop a bribery charge against the utility.
