Today closing arguments in the trial of the “ComEd Four” began. The “ComEd Four” are four ComEd executives presently on trial for conspiring to bribe former and long-time Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to get favorable treatment for the utility from the state. Steve Daniels opens his report at Crain’s Chicago Business:
Liars on the witness stand attempting to run away from their roles in a criminal conspiracy. Or, four defendants who are “collateral damage” in a prosecutorial obsession to put Mike Madigan in jail.
Closing arguments in the “ComEd Four” trial Monday presented starkly different interpretations of six weeks’ worth of evidence from nearly 50 witnesses, dozens of wiretapped recordings and hundreds of emails that jurors will begin to sift through, likely late Tuesday.
What follows is a lengthy exposition of the closing arguments of the defense and prosecution.
I have no idea of what the jury’s verdict or the outcome of the trial will be. I wish I were able to find some good and unbiased commentary but I have found that extremely difficult.
I have speculated that, if they are found guilty, we may see the largest civil suit in the history of the United States.
Now the case has gone to the jury.
One has to wonder just how much crime is committed by public utilities. From Wiki:
“The Ohio nuclear bribery scandal (2020) is a political scandal in Ohio involving allegations that electric utility company FirstEnergy paid roughly $60 million to Generation Now, a 501(c)(4) organization purportedly controlled by Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Larry Householder, in exchange for passing a $1.3 billion bailout for the nuclear power operator. It was described as “likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio” by U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers, who charged Householder and four others with racketeering on July 21, 2020. According to prosecutors, FirstEnergy poured millions into the campaigns of 21 candidates during the 2018 Ohio House of Representatives election, which ultimately helped Householder replace Ryan Smith as Republican House speaker.”
Householder was expelled from the Ohio House and sentenced to 20 years in prison, and the utility paid a $3.8 million fine.
I would presume that there is enormous corruption in any industry in which prices charged to consumers are negotiated with the state.
I have it on good authority that in the Ohio case it was just a friend giving him some money and as we all know its perfectly OK if a friend gives you gifts worth thousands of dollars. You dont even have to report it.
Steve
Some of the trial coverage from old hands seems to have a flavor of normalizing this as politics. It used to be the utilities would have to hire people for ghost payrolls as meter readers; they didn’t have to work other than canvassing their assigned neighborhoods for candidates. There is no evidence that the people didn’t do their jobs, which seems to be a distinction without a difference.
But the old hands think that the jury (being normal people) will be shocked by the e-mails they take back with them to the jury room, which have code words that were decoded at trial. I wonder if the main issue that the jury is wrestling with is that the accused appear to have different levels of culpability.