Inset top left: This Oct. 4, 2007 file photo shows Tim Mapes, chief of staff to Illinois House Speaker Madigan, at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File). Background: The Illinois State Capitol is seen during sunset in Springfield, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman). Right: AP file photo Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File).
Tim Mapes was the chief of staff to one of the more powerful politicians in Illinois, but after lying to a federal grand jury probing sprawling public corruption — even after he was granted immunity — a federal judge sentenced him to 2 1/2 years in prison this week.
U.S. District Judge John Knees expressed his dismay and disbelief to Mapes, 69, as he sentenced him at a federal courthouse in Chicago following his conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges by a jury last August. Prosecutors had granted him immunity just before he testified to a grand jury exploring bribery and racketeering schemes involving his boss, former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Mapes had a clear path out of his legal troubles.
But instead of walking it, he perjured himself seven times, court records show.
“Perhaps this was out of some sense of loyalty. But if that’s the case, your loyalty was gravely misguided. Whatever compulsion you felt to protect [lobbyist] Michael McClain and the former speaker of the House, Mr. Madigan, as far as I can tell, it was not reciprocated in any way,” the judge told Mapes, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Mapes was a gatekeeper who wielded nearly as much power as his boss did. A longtime investigative CBS reporter remarked in an interview after the sentence came down that Mapes for years hung a placard in his office that read: “‘If you want to see the wizard, you gotta go through me.”
Mapes has worked with Madigan in some capacity since 1992 and in 2011 held the powerful role of the clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives.
He testified to a federal grand jury in the spring of 2021 and faced 600 questions, CBS reported, and lied in seemingly small ways that could shut down larger areas of inquiry.
Specifically, investigators and prosecutors were interested in unwinding how Madigan and others in his orbit allegedly acted in tandem to secure sweetheart deals for private contracts, including with Illinois’ largest electric utility, Commonwealth Edison, or ComEd.
Once Mapes took the stand, he was eager to protect his boss, prosecutors said in an announcement this week.
“Mapes denied knowing that [a] consultant acted as an agent or performed work for the Speaker during those years, when, in fact, Mapes knew that the consultant carried out work and assignments on behalf of the Speaker and communicated messages on the Speaker’s behalf,” the DOJ said.
His defense attorneys argued Mapes was doing his best to offer what he knew when he appeared, but at trial, testimony emerged from FBI agents that said otherwise and highlighted how Mapes really ran business like “the head of a mafia family,” the State Journal Register reported.
Conveying frustration and disappointment, the judge remarked to the former chief of staff that he couldn’t understand why he would lie under the conditions afford to him.
“I have to say the law of omerta had no place in that grand jury room,” the judge said, invoking a mafia principle more commonly known as the “code of silence” employed by mobsters to solve problems among themselves instead of turning to police or law enforcement for help.
“And now you will pay a price for it,” Knees continued, adding that the people of Illinois, long plagued by public corruption, “cry out for accountability.”
Defense attorneys requested that Mapes serve a sentence of community service.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Several letters of support were entered onto the docket for Mapes before he was sentenced. CBS reported that many were from public officials. But those details remain under wraps for now as the letters were ordered temporarily under seal. They are expected to be made public in the weeks ahead.
Mapes must surrender himself to prison on June 11. A request for a new trial was denied, according to a paperless entry on the federal docket.
Mapes resigned from his chief-of-staff role in 2018 amid allegations of sexual harassment and bullying brought against him by a clerk for Madigan’s office. Local PBS affiliate WTTW reported then that his resignation came at Madigan’s direction. Mapes also stepped down from his role as the executive director of the Democratic Party of Illinois and was removed from various political committees.
At least three women came out against Madigan campaign officials during the #MeToo movement and accused state officials of looking the other way when harassment and retaliation claims were raised.
The State Journal Register reported that at Mapes’ trial, witnesses regularly testified that he liked to “stay in the foxhole” for Madigan. This was reportedly backed up when jurors heard wiretapped calls during which staffers or others who worked under the speaker invoked the phrase to describe Mapes’ loyalty.
Records reviewed by Law&Crime show that in 2020, ComEd was assessed a $200 million fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
As part of that deal, the company had to admit that it arranged “jobs, vendor subcontracts, and monetary payments associated with those jobs and subcontracts, for various associates of a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois, to influence and reward the official’s efforts to assist ComEd with respect to legislation concerning ComEd and its business.”
On the heels of that agreement, lobbyist and longtime Madigan associate Michael McClain was indicted on bribery charges. McClain, 75, and three others including a former ComEd CEO, vice president and consultant, were found guilty of conspiring to influence and reward Madigan, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
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