A new report from WBEZ makes startling claims about a possible rape cover-up.
A former Springfield lobbyist and close friend of House Speaker Madigan, Michael McClain, once asked for leniency for a state worker due to his loyalty to the administration, according to WBEZ.
As part of the plea for leniency, Michael McClain claimed the state worker was a good man who “kept his mouth shut on Jones’ ghost workers, the rape in Champaign and other items.”
This was uncovered after a WBEZ obtained a 2012 email during an open-records request.
News of the alleged cover-up prompted quick responses from state lawmakers.
Lawmakers throughout the state of Illinois are giving sharp response to a Chicago radio report this week concerning a powerful former Springfield lobbyist and close friend of House Speaker Michael Madigan who once sought leniency for a state worker in a disciplinary case by arguing that the worker “kept his mouth shut” about an unspecified rape downstate.
In the previously undisclosed 2012 email, ex-lobbyist Michael McClain urged two top aides to then-Gov. Pat Quinn to avoid firing the worker, also telling them the man was politically “loyal” to Quinn and stayed silent about “ghost workers.”
House Republican Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) in a release stated: “This revelation is shocking and beyond words. I am disturbed by the fact that horrific and possible criminal actions may have occurred and government officials, Mike McClain and his enablers chose to stay silent instead of taking action.”
At the end of a press conference in Chicago Wednesday morning on property tax relief, Durkin was asked about the story. Listen here.
