Illinois state Rep. Bob Rita is not anticipated to testify Monday morning within the corruption trial of former Speaker Michael Madigan.
Rita had been on the stand for a couple of minutes on Thursday and was anticipated to proceed on Monday morning. Instead, proceedings started with lengthy sidelines and a break. When jurors lastly returned to the courtroom shortly earlier than 10 a.m., U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey instructed them that Rita’s testimony could be “put out of order.”
Jurors then started listening to extra wiretapped recordings between Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime ally Michael McClain.
After a number of tapings, former ComEd normal counsel Tom O’Neill was known as to the stand. O’Neill testified final 12 months that he was pressured by McClain to rent a legislation agency led by highly effective Democratic political operative Victor Reyes. At the identical time, the agency was making an attempt to realize Madigan’s help on key laws in Springfield.
As testimony resumed with out him, Rita was nonetheless standing along with her lawyer within the hallway close to the courtroom.
Rita, a Blue Island Democrat, was taking her third flip as a prosecution witness, having beforehand testified in final 12 months’s ComEd Four corruption trial and the perjury trial of Madigan’s former chief of workers, Tim Mapes . He was anticipated to offer jurors a firsthand account of Madigan’s far-reaching energy within the General Assembly.
Rita, a 21-year House veteran whose district consists of elements of Chicago’s South Side and southern suburbs, is the primary elected official to take the witness stand within the trial, which started Oct. 8 in Dirksen’s U.S. courthouse.
He has not been accused of wrongdoing and on Thursday, earlier than the week-long trial, he instructed the jury that he had been supplied with a “non-targeted letter” from the U.S. legal professional’s workplace assuring him that he’s not at present below investigation .
Rita is vital to the prosecution’s case as a result of she was a part of Madigan’s House management crew and a co-sponsor of the huge 2016 ComEd laws on the heart of the prosecution. He can also be anticipated to testify as he was named a sponsor of the state’s huge playing overhaul in 2013 after a gathering in Madigan’s workplace.
Rita offered some early fireworks within the ComEd case when requested how Madigan sometimes wields his energy. He paused for a second earlier than saying in his flat South Side accent, “Through worry and intimidation.”
Madigan, 82, of Chicago, who was speaker of the Illinois House for many years and head of the state Democratic Party, faces racketeering prices that allege he ran his state and political operations as a prison enterprise, plotting with Utility giants ComEd and AT&T gave his buddies contracts that required little or no work and used his public place to drum up enterprise for his personal legislation agency.
Both Madigan and McClain, 77, a former contract lobbyist for ComEd from southern Quincy state, have pleaded not responsible and denied any wrongdoing.
The trial, which started Oct. 8, obtained off to a gradual begin however intensified significantly Thursday with the playback of a collection of wiretapped calls from McClain’s cellphone that painted Madigan as sensible within the excessive, rooted in day by day political trivia. and significantly involved concerning the unfavorable optics that the actions of others doubtlessly represented for him.
State Representative Bob Rita
Through tapes, emails and letters, jurors Thursday additionally obtained a transparent window into the connection between Madigan and McClain, who served collectively within the Legislature within the Seventies and shaped a friendship that put McClain within the extraordinarily uncommon place of getting the ear of the speaker.
Rita is the sixth witness known as by the prosecution thus far. The trial is anticipated to final no less than till mid-December.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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