Madigan’s ex-chief of staff should get up to 5 years in prison for lies ‘calculated to thwart’ probe into former boss, feds say

Federal prosecutors asked a judge Monday to sentence former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s longtime chief of staff to as many as five years in prison for lying to a grand jury as investigators began to close in on Madigan.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz argued in a court memo that the lies told by Tim Mapes “were calculated to thwart the government’s sprawling investigation of a series of unlawful schemes calculated to corrupt the government of this state at the highest levels.”

She also wrote that Mapes “still refuses to accept responsibility” and “instead blames the government” for not giving him enough information when he appeared before the grand jury.

Schwartz asked U.S. District Judge John Kness to give Mapes between 51 and 63 months in prison. However, Mapes’ lawyers countered with their own recommendation later Monday, asking for a sentence of time served, supervised release and “significant” community service.

“Tim Mapes accepts the jury’s verdict — though he disagrees with it and continues to maintain his innocence,” they wrote.

Defense attorneys Andrew Porter and Katie Hill argued that, between Mapes’ prosecution and his 2018 dismissal by Madigan, “the last five years have constituted a half decade of misery for Tim and his family.”

They pointed to more than 130 letters of support and insisted that “sending this nearly 70-year-old man to prison would achieve nothing more than to inflict undue additional suffering and hardship on Tim, his family, and his community.”

Mapes is set to be sentenced Feb. 12.

A trial jury in August found Mapes guilty of perjury and attempted obstruction of justice, deciding that he lied on seven specific occasions, regarding 14 different topics. He was among nine people convicted amid five trials in 2023 resulting from federal public corruption investigations in Chicago.

Mapes spent two decades as Madigan’s chief of staff and was described at trial as one of Madigan’s two closest allies in Springfield. But Mapes was also seen as threatening and controlling, and Madigan forced him to resign in 2018 amid harassment and bullying accusations.

Then, Mapes was summoned before a federal grand jury with an immunity order in March 2021. Madigan’s other close ally, Michael McClain, was under indictment by then, and it was clear the feds had Madigan in their sights.

The immunity order meant Mapes couldn’t be prosecuted for anything he told the grand jury, as long as he told the truth. Instead, he lied repeatedly to the grand jury about work done for Madigan by McClain. So Mapes found himself under indictment roughly two months later.

McClain has since been convicted with three others for a nearly decade-long conspiracy to bribe Madigan to benefit ComEd. McClain also faces trial with Madigan this October on charges brought in 2022.

Porter and Hill have insisted that prosecutors never produced “any evidence that Mr. Mapes had knowledge of or participation in any bribery scheme involving Michael Madigan, Michael McClain, or ComEd.”

The evidence instead centered on whether Mapes lied about “tasks” and “assignments” related to fundraising; pressuring then-state Rep. Lou Lang to resign; who to appoint to leadership positions in the Illinois House; and how to save Madigan when claims of sexual harassment were leveled against one of his aides.

“All of that conduct was perfectly legal,” Porter and Hill have stressed.

Schwartz countered last month that Mapes’ argument “ignores the fact that evidence need not concern criminal conduct” to affect an investigation.

Mapes’ lawyers have also argued that his case should be put on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a bribery statute that plays a role in the indictments against Madigan and McClain. However, Mapes was not convicted under that statute, and Kness has yet to publicly acknowledge that request, made six weeks ago.

Jurors in Mapes’ trial heard several secret FBI recordings largely made in 2018, exposing them to plenty of behind-the-scenes Springfield intrigue.

The feds laid out evidence that Mapes kept track of the burgeoning investigation into Madigan, which went public early in 2019. That evidence seemed designed to undermine the notion that Mapes could have been caught off-guard by questions in the grand jury in March 2021.

Inside that grand jury room, Mapes was asked if he had “any knowledge” about whether McClain did tasks or assignments for Madigan between 2017 and 2018. Mapes said, “I don’t recall any.”

But jurors learned that, when sexual harassment complaints leveled by political consultant Alaina Hampton against a Madigan aide rocked the speaker’s organization in 2018, McClain sent a fiery email message laying out a plan to save Madigan. McClain wrote that it was time to “play hardball and quit doing this nicey/nicey stuff,” and he suggested pitching scandalous stories to “over worked, underpayed” news reporters.

Mapes was among the message’s recipients.

McClain also told Mapes late in 2018 that he had an “assignment” from Madigan to tell Lang it was time for him to resign from office over a separate brewing allegation. McClain and Mapes discussed that “assignment” multiple times on calls heard by jurors, including once when Mapes asked McClain, “Will you be wearing your big boy pants that day?”

Nevertheless, when a prosecutor asked Mapes inside the grand jury room whether he knew McClain to have had “any contact” with Lang “for any purpose,” Mapes insisted, “I don’t know of any.”