Defendant and former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore walks down Dearborn Street after exiting the U.S. Dirksen Courthouse in downtown Chicago following the first day of the “ComEd Four” bribery conspiracy trial on March 14, 2023. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
Near the end of a long day of animated testimony Monday, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore’s voice grew quiet.
The jury in the “ComEd Four” bribery trial had just heard for the second time a wiretapped recording on which she told a close associate of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, “You take good care of me, and so does our friend, and I will do the best that I can to, to take care of you.”
It’s a comment prosecutors have held up as real-time evidence of a scheme to bribe the powerful Democratic speaker, complete with a coded reference to Madigan and seemingly imbued with pay-to-play politics.
But Pramaggiore testified her comments in that September 2018 call with Michael McClain have a totally innocent explanation.
Asked why she said Madigan took “good care” of her, Pramaggiore said she wasn’t talking about it in “the legislative sense,” but perhaps about when the speaker had helped find her son volunteer work years earlier.
She also said that by referencing Madigan as “our friend” she was just trying to placate McClain.
“Mike reveres the speaker, and I would often mention him in our conversations in order to enhance our relationship,” Pramaggiore told the jury.
The exchange marked a day in which Pramaggiore methodically denied each of the allegations against her in the hot-button political corruption case, which is now in its sixth week.
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