State House Speaker Mike Madigan last week said he won’t convene a special committee to investigate an alleged cover-up of an unspecified “rape” and ghost payrollers — incidents mentioned in an email between Madigan confidant Mike McClain and members of Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration in 2012 — because of the “sensitivity of the matter.”
Madigan’s refusal was the latest fallout over not only the explosive email, first disclosed by WBEZ this week, but also over a sweeping federal investigation involving the speaker and people close to him.
It’s been almost a year since the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that the FBI had secretly recorded Madigan in 2014 trying to get business for his private law firm from a developer.
Since that report, the Sun-Times and other news organizations have disclosed how federal investigators have been examining connections between lobbyists close to Madigan, including McClain, and the utility ComEd. Neither Madigan nor McClain have been charged with any wrongdoing.
It’s unclear if the email is connected to any activity by authorities. The WBEZ report on Tuesday revealed McClain sent the email to two senior Quinn aides in a bid to win leniency for a worker in a disciplinary case. In it, McClain argued the man “has kept his mouth shut on Jones’ ghost workers, the rape in Champaign and other items.”
