THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All...Trump...McCann...Mapes
February 15, 2024
Good morning, Illinois.
Thanks to our friends at WMAY in Springfield for having me in to host the morning show the last few days. You can check out conversations with folks like Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski, Sen. Steve McClure, Chamber President Lou Sandoval, and Farm Bureau President Brian Duncan.
There is nothing on Governor Pritzker’s public schedule today.
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YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Trump’s Chicago lawyers allege ‘mudslinging’ in bid to freeze Illinois ballot challenge in appellate court (Chicago Sun-Times)
Donald Trump’s lawyers in Chicago have ratcheted up the rhetoric in their efforts to keep the former Republican president on the ballot in Illinois next month, accusing lawyers for five voters who object to his candidacy of “uncivil and inappropriate mudslinging.”
A hearing on the bid to knock the 2024 Republican frontrunner off the ballot in Illinois is set for Friday at the Daley Center. Meanwhile, Trump’s attorneys have asked the First District Appellate Court to put the matter on hold pending appeal. They said they did so in hopes of preventing “a wasteful, controversial, and regrettably uncivil spectacle.”
Lawyers for the objecting voters say Trump’s accusations amount to “a bizarre attempt to conjure a ‘genuine emergency’ from his own feigned outrage,” and they counter that Trump “mainly takes issue” with how they characterized his description of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Every forum” that has considered the facts of that day “determined that Trump actively engaged in an insurrection in an effort to illegally hold on to the office of the presidency,” they wrote.
This all comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred when it found in December that Trump is barred from the presidency under the 14th Amendment. The nation’s high court heard arguments on the matter Thursday, and it seems poised to rule in Trump’s favor.
In day 2 of trial, prosecutors detail former lawmaker’s alleged RV rental scheme (Capitol News Illinois)
As federal agents wrapped up their first interview with former Republican State Sen. Sam McCann in the summer of 2018, one observed that there were “a lot of vehicles in your driveway.”
“I gotta have wheels,” McCann told the agents a few moments earlier. “The only shot I got at winning is making personal connections.”
McCann’s words were played back to him in a federal courtroom on Wednesday, the second day of a trial in which he stands accused of misusing campaign funds for personal benefit for years while in office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Bass played more than an hour of FBI-recorded tape from that first meeting with agents on July 30, 2018.
The former senator appeared in U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless’ courtroom again wearing a black and gray striped uniform from Macon County Jail. He’s been held there since Friday, when the judge ordered him detained after he disobeyed direct orders upon his discharge from a sudden hospitalization in St. Louis, which delayed the trial from last week.
Nearly six years earlier, McCann was in the middle of a third-party campaign for governor at the time the agents approached him. He said he regularly drove 100,000 miles annually in his job as state senator, as his rural district spanned seven counties westward from Springfield to the Missouri border, and the senator said he drove everywhere to connect with constituents and voters.
But the constant driving, McCann told the agents, left him little time to get his campaign finances in order every three months when he was required to file quarterly reports to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
“I’m out on the road all the time,” McCann said after agents relayed that his publicly stated campaign finances were wildly out of whack with his true bank statements, which they’d gained access to in the course of their yearlong investigation. He also lamented that he didn’t have a big campaign team like some others in Illinois politics.
One of the agents told McCann that he was guessing the two balances were “five digits, if not six digits out of balance.”
The government is expected to rest its case on Thursday.
Related: McCann's mother-in-law testifies on second day of former state senator's federal trial (State Journal-Register)
Prosecutor says McCann made personal use of campaign funds even after fed investigation (Associated Press)
2.5 years in prison for Tim Mapes, ex-aide to Michael Madigan. ‘Your loyalty was gravely misguided.’ (Chicago Sun-Times)
Even after he’d sentenced Michael Madigan’s longtime chief of staff Monday to 2.5 years in prison for lying to a grand jury as the federal noose tightened around his former boss, a frustrated judge told Tim Mapes, “I don’t know why you did what you did.”
It’s a question U.S. District Judge John Kness raised repeatedly as he considered what punishment to hand down to Mapes, the man who’d famously spent two decades keeping the “trains running on time” for Madigan, Illinois’ once-powerful former House speaker. Mapes had been granted immunity but still tried to thwart the feds' aggressive investigation of Madigan with his grand jury testimony.
“Perhaps this was out of some sense of loyalty,” Kness said Monday. “But if that’s the case, your loyalty was gravely misguided. Whatever compulsion you felt to protect Michael McClain and the former speaker of the House, Mr. Madigan, as far as I can tell, it was not reciprocated in any way.”
But before he learned his fate, Mapes told the judge that he “never intended to be anything but a public servant and have tried, in ways big and small, to live my life as a good man.” He said he tried to help make Illinoisans’ lives better through his work in Springfield. He also recognized that “many people in the state of Illinois have lost faith in their government.”
“And that breaks my heart,” Mapes said. “It is contrary to everything I’ve tried to do in my career and it brings me great sorrow.”
Related: Ex-Madigan aide sentenced to 30 months in prison for obstruction of justice attempt, perjury (Capitol News Illinois)
Opinion: Despite taxpayer-funded salary, Mapes was no public servant (Shaw Media)
Opinion: One of Madigan's main men goes down for the count (Champaign News-Gazette)
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POLITICAL POTPOURRI
Transportation workers rally for new contract amid negotiations with state (Capitol News Illinois)
Moving to Illinois for reproductive health services? You could get paid (State Journal-Register)
Split verdict on tax charges for ex-state legislator Annazette Collins (Chicago Tribune)
Giannoulias: Nixing or keeping senior road test is up to lawmakers (Daily Herald)
Gun rights groups ask SCOTUS to review Illinois’ assault weapons ban (Capitol News Illinois)
Kevin Warren's goal for answers on Bears stadium: 'The timeline has to be 2024' (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Who’s funding the Mike Bost and Darren Bailey campaigns to represent IL in Congress? (Belleville News-Democrat)
State’s attorney Democratic candidates spar over Foxx at Tribune Editorial Board meeting (Chicago Tribune)
What Mayor Johnson’s decision on ending ShotSpotter says about his leadership (Chicago Sun-Times)
Cook County judge weighs challenge to referendum appearing on the March ballot (WBEZ)
Editorial: Bill requiring attorneys when police interrogate minors is the right move (Chicago Sun-Times)
Opinion: We can help put an end to Illinois Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies at the polls (Chicago Tribune)
Vallas: What does real criminal justice reform look like? Job training programs (Chicago Tribune)
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