The woman who once led Illinois’ largest utility had nothing to say to a federal judge Monday, moments before she was sentenced to two years in prison for a corrupt scheme aimed at former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
But onetime ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore struck a tone of defiance less than an hour after her long-awaited sentencing hearing, insisting through a spokesperson that she is innocent and vowing to take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court, “if necessary.”
Along the way, the spokesperson pointed to President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to pause enforcement of a law Pramaggiore has been convicted of violating — the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — because it had been “stretched beyond proper bounds and abused.”
“That has happened here,” Pramaggiore spokesperson Mark Herr said in a written statement.
“Chicago is not a foreign jurisdiction,” he added.
Pramaggiore’s legal team has long insisted upon her innocence. That’s despite a jury’s verdict more than two years ago, finding that she and three others participated in a nearly decadelong plot to sway Madigan to benefit ComEd.
But sentencing day finally arrived Monday for Pramaggiore in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Manish Shah. The judge found that Pramaggiore lied on the witness stand at trial, “intentionally threading a needle with the jury” in a failed bid for acquittal.
In the end, Shah said her scheme amounted to “corruption of consequential public policy.”
“And it’s important for the punishment to reflect that,” he said.
Still, Pramaggiore’s two-year sentence falls far short of the nearly six years prosecutors sought.
Shah told Pramaggiore to report to prison Dec. 1. But before he left the bench, Pramaggiore attorney Scott Lassar asked the judge to let her remain free while she appeals her conviction. Shah told Lassar to put his request in writing.
It all came one week after Shah gave an 18-month prison sentence to former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker, one of three convicted with Pramaggiore in May 2023. The others were longtime Madigan confidant Michael McClain and ex-City Club President Jay Doherty.
McClain is due to be sentenced Thursday. Doherty faces sentencing Aug. 5.
A separate jury convicted Madigan in part for his role in the ComEd conspiracy in February. He’s been sentenced to 7 ½ years behind bars and is due in prison Oct. 13. But he’s also asked to remain free during an appeal.
Jurors in both cases heard that ComEd paid $1.3 million to five Madigan allies over eight years so that Madigan would look more favorably at the utility’s legislation. The recipients were paid through intermediaries, and they did little to no work for ComEd.
The statement from Pramaggiore’s spokesperson signals that the legal battle at the center of the case could be far from over, even with sentencings underway.
The hearings were long delayed because of activity at the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices there decided late in 2023 to pick up a corruption case out of northwest Indiana and explore a federal bribery law aimed at state and local officials.
Ultimately, the high court found that the law does not also criminalize after-the-fact rewards known as “gratuities.”
Shah wound up tossing a series of bribery counts in the ComEd case as a result, leaving each of the four defendants convicted of conspiracy, as well as four counts of falsifying books and records under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
After taking office in January, Trump found that the FCPA had been “stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States.” He paused enforcement for six months and ordered a review of all existing enforcement actions.
But prosecutors told Shah in May that officials in Washington D.C. had rejected a challenge to the ComEd convictions based on Trump’s order, so the sentencing process moved forward.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker told Shah on Monday that Pramaggiore “had the power to stop this scheme at any time.
“She could have said ‘no’ to Madigan’s requests,” Streicker said. “She didn’t. Instead, she made a deliberate choice to continue it.”
Lassar told the judge “you will never have a finer person appear before you than Ms. Pramaggiore.” He spoke of Pramaggiore’s good works for her employees. He said, “I don’t know how she did her job and all these other kindnesses.
“It’s inexplicable to me how someone could do all that, but she did.”
But in the end, Shah told Pramaggiore she “had the power to change the culture at ComEd.”
“You didn’t think to change the culture of corruption,” Shah told her. “You were all in.”