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REMINDER: Convicted Former Illinois Speaker of House Michael Madigan Is Connected to Obama, Bill Ayers, Weissmann and Biden
https://joehoft.com/ ^ | June 20, 2025 | Joe Hoft

Posted on 06/20/2025 11:05:29 AM PDT by bitt

Michael Madigan, connected to Obama, Bill Ayers and Andrew Weissmann, was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison this past week for corruption. Who would have predicted this? Michael Madigan ran the state of Illinois like a mobster for more than three decades. He used his power to crush anyone and any entity that dared oppose him on anything. He is the definition of a pure politician. He is now going to prison.

Michael Madigan, the country’s longest-serving state House leader, served as speaker of the Illinois House from 1983 until 2021, with the exception of two years. Along the way, he developed a reputation as an all-powerful political wizard who wielded vast influence over laws affecting nearly every aspect of life in the state.

Five months ago, the man long known to Illinois as “Mr. Speaker” made the stunning decision to climb onto the witness stand, swear an oath and tell his side of the story.

But along the way, Michael J. Madigan denied his famous friendship with the fixer known as Michael McClain. He denied a promise he made to the once-powerful Ald. Danny Solis. And he denied his role in a bribery scheme in which Illinois’ largest utility tried to buy his favor.

It turns out, U.S. District Judge John Blakey didn’t buy his tale.

“To put it bluntly, it was a nauseating display,” the judge said during the former speaker’s long-anticipated sentencing hearing Friday.

Then, the judge locked eyes with Madigan, the man once regarded as the state’s most powerful politician. Blakey looked down at him from the bench and said, “you lied, sir. You lied.”

“You did not have to,” Blakey continued. “You had a right to sit there and exercise your right to silence. But you took that stand and you took the law into your own hands.”

The ultimate politician Madigan was the king of Illinois politics. Here is a video that tells his story.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: aaan; arafat; billayers; chicago; chiraq; columbiau; columbiauniversity; hezbollah; illinois; khaledi; mei; michaelmadigan; michaelmcclain; middleeastinstitute; nasrallah; obama; palestine; pritzker; said; weissmannbiden; williamayers

1 posted on 06/20/2025 11:05:29 AM PDT by bitt
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To: null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; bgill; bitt; ...

P


2 posted on 06/20/2025 11:05:43 AM PDT by bitt (<img src=' 'width=30%>)
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To: bitt

I bet Mike wishes he was Cankles.


3 posted on 06/20/2025 11:07:08 AM PDT by Libloather (Why do climate change hoax deniers live in mansions on the beach?)
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To: bitt

Nothing ever happens


4 posted on 06/20/2025 11:07:27 AM PDT by JonPreston ( ✌ ☮️ )
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To: bitt

Pritzker is also corrupt.


5 posted on 06/20/2025 11:14:36 AM PDT by Thunder90 (All posts soley represent my own opinions)
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To: bitt

I hung out with some pro-life Democrats in Chicago in the early ‘80s. In those days, the ethnic urban Demm pols were sometimes pro-life on paper. Both Richie Daley Jr and Michael Madigan were. That dropped when they climbed the ladder. Glenn Poshard was the last one, and when he got the gubernatorial nomination, the Chicago Dems backed crooked Republican George Ryan instead.


6 posted on 06/20/2025 11:14:52 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." (John 2:5))
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To: Dr. Sivana

Dickie Durbin was pro-life when he Rep’d a district in S Illinois. Flipped to run for Senate.


7 posted on 06/20/2025 11:23:35 AM PDT by fastrock ( )
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To: Libloather

What is amazing is the initial charges happened during the middle of Biden’s term. Somebody wanted him out and he refused to go is my guess..


8 posted on 06/20/2025 11:24:01 AM PDT by EVO X ( )
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To: bitt; piasa

“But along the way, Michael J. Madigan denied his famous friendship with the fixer known as Michael McClain. He denied a promise he made to the once-powerful Ald. Danny Solis. And he denied his role in a bribery scheme in which Illinois’ largest utility tried to buy his favor.”

This utility bribe involved Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), connected to Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers and interwoven with the financing of Obama’s early activism in Chicago.

* * *

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-needs-to-explain-his-ties-to-william-ayers/

That’s how William Ayers got where he was. When he came out of hiding because the federal government was unable to prosecute him (because of government misconduct), he got a degree in education from Columbia and then moved to Chicago and got a job on the education faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. How did he get that job? Well, it can’t have hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was chairman of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) and a charter member of the Chicago establishment. As Mayor Richard M. Daley said recently, in arguing that the Ayers association should not be held against Obama, “His father was a great friend of my father.”

* * *
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2008/10/07/why-wont-obama-talk-about-columbia/

. . .Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”. . .

Obama and Ayers shared all kinds of views. That is why they worked so well together at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), funding the likes of Mike Klonsky, a fellow SDS and Maoist associate of Ayers who, as Steve Diamond relates, used to host a “social justice” blog on Obama’s campaign website. With Obama heading the board of directors that approved expenditures and Ayers, the mastermind running its operational arm, hundreds of thousands of CAC dollars poured into the “Small Schools Workshop” — a project begun by Ayers and run by Klonsky to spur the revolution from the ground up.

Precisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist “black liberation theology.” Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate “catastrophe.”

Khalidi, who regards Israel as a “racist” “apartheid” state, supports Palestinian terror strikes against Israeli military targets. It’s little surprise that he should be such a favorite of Ayers, the terrorist for whom “racism” and “apartheid” trip off the tongue as easily as “pass the salt.”

And it’s no surprise that the like-minded Obama would be a fan. Khalidi, after all, has mastered the Arafat art of posing as a moderate before credulous Westerners while (as Martin Kramer documents) scalding America’s “Zionist lobby” when addressing Arabic audiences. The Obama who decries “bitter” Americans “cling[ing] to guns or religion” when he’s in San Francisco but morphs into a God-fearing Second Amendment enthusiast when he’s in Pennsylvania — like the Obama who pummels NAFTA before labor union supporters but has advisers quietly assure the Canadians not to worry about such campaign cant — surely appreciates the craft.

Obama and Ayers not only demonstrated their shared view of Khalidi by funding him. They also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures. That would be the same Columbia from which Obama graduated in 1983.

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology. . .


9 posted on 06/20/2025 2:36:22 PM PDT by Fedora
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To: bitt

Is he a member of the ‘democrat commie community’?


10 posted on 06/20/2025 6:27:55 PM PDT by GOPJ (The "PROTECT CRIMINAL ILLEGALS" riots are subsidize by cartels, commies, and organized crime)
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