ComEd’s former top lobbyist spent weeks in 2023 listening to the sound of his own voice, learning through secret FBI recordings how he sounded when he thought no one was listening.
The feds caught John Hooker boasting about a corrupt plan to sway then-Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, calling it “clean for all of us.” He predicted that Madigan, if rebuffed, might conclude, “you’re not going to do something for me? I don’t have to do anything for you.”
Still, it wasn’t until Monday that Hooker finally faced a federal judge and the possibility of prison time for the conduct caught by the FBI. Hooker told U.S. District Judge Manish Shah, “I do not like the way I sound on those recordings.” They were “very humbling” to hear, he said.
But Shah concluded that Hooker participated in “secretive, sophisticated, criminal corruption.” And he said it was “imperative to disabuse anyone” of the notion that “this was just lobbying.”
Then he sentenced Hooker to 18 months in prison. It’s the first sentence to be handed down in a case that went to trial in 2023, ending with the convictions of four former top ComEd officials and lobbyists who plotted to illegally influence Madigan to benefit the utility.
“Lobbyists, corporate executives, public officials — whether in Springfield, Chicago or Washington, D.C. — should be reminded that there are still crimes on the books,” Shah said.
Hooker, 76, showed little reaction to the prison sentence. He left the Dirksen Federal Courthouse beside Jacqueline Jacobson, one of his defense attorneys. They both declined to speak to reporters on their way out the door.
Convicted along with Hooker in May 2023 was longtime Madigan confidant Michael McClain, ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, and onetime City Club President Jay Doherty. All three face sentencing in the coming weeks.
Madigan was convicted in part for his role in the conspiracy earlier this year and was sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison. The former speaker is due to surrender Oct. 13.
Hooker is now due in prison one day after that.
Because Hooker is the first of the four ComEd defendants to be sentenced, Monday’s hearing offered a preview of things to come for Hooker’s co-defendants. Lawyers representing McClain and Pramaggiore were spotted in the courtroom Monday.
The sentencings were long delayed because of machinations at the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court’s ruling in a separate corruption case led to the dismissal of a series of bribery counts in the ComEd case earlier this year.
That left the four defendants each convicted of conspiracy and four counts of falsifying books and records.
Still, Shah told the courtroom that a reasonable jury could have found the four guilty of bribery beyond a reasonable doubt. And, he added, “I reached that conclusion based on my own review of the trial evidence.”
Shah did not preside over the trial but inherited the case after the 2024 death of U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.
Hooker and the others arranged for $1.3 million to be paid by ComEd to five Madigan allies over eight years so that Madigan would look more favorably at ComEd’s legislative agenda. The money was paid through intermediaries, including Doherty’s consulting firm, and the allies did little or no work for ComEd.
“Burying bribes through hidden subcontracts was a creative solution that necessarily involved falsifying books, as Mr. Hooker well knew,” Shah said.
The judge also said Hooker gave “intentionally and materially false” testimony at trial. For example, Hooker claimed that he was “just joshing around” in a call with McClain — though the men actually seemed to brag about hatching the plan to secretly pay Madigan’s allies.
Shah called it a “clumsy lie, but a lie nonetheless.”
Hooker’s sentencing took place in a crowded courtroom. Jacobson told the judge many people in the gallery were members of Hooker’s immediate family and his “church family.”
They included people who had written to him about Hooker’s “transformational role in their lives,” she said.
The defense attorney reminded the judge that Hooker not only pulled himself out of poverty before rising from ComEd’s mailroom to the utility’s top ranks, but “his goal in taking himself out of the violence and poverty was to take others with him.”
She said Hooker is “still kind, he’s still generous, he’s still helpful, and he’s still there.”
Shah seemed to agree. Even as he sent Hooker to prison Monday, the judge told him, “you are so much more than the crimes that you’ve committed.”
However, Shah explained that, “people are cynical about government, especially government that treats governance like a business transaction.”
“Those without corrupt access are left voiceless, yet still under the thumb of a corrupt system,” he said.
“Those of you inside of it have the power to stop it.”