Utility executives convicted of corruption cite Trump order in ask to hold case

• Attorneys for four former executives of the Illinois utility company ComEd, convicted of bribery and corruption in 2023, are asking for a hold on post-trial motions. They cite a recent executive order by President Trump pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

• Trump’s Feb. 10 executive order claims that the FCPA has been abused in ways that hurt America’s interests. It instructs the U.S. attorney general to evaluate and report potential policy changes within 180 days.

• The “ComEd Four” defendants also requested the court reconsider their verdict, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion that narrowed federal bribery laws.

---

Full Story

Attorneys for four former executives of an Illinois utility company are requesting a hold on a federal case against them. They say an executive order signed by President Donald Trump this month could affect the charges they’ve been convicted of in 2023, including federal bribery and corruption charges.

Media outlets labeled these four as the “ComEd Four” while covering the high-profile trial: ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, retired ComEd Vice President John Hooker and former ComEd consultant Jay Doherty. They were convicted in May 2023 on four counts of conspiring to influence former Illinois House of Representatives Speaker Michael Madigan so that he would usher through legislation favorable to the electric utility company. They were also found guilty of multiple bribery and record falsification charges.

Now, attorneys for the convicted ComEd officials are asking U.S. District Judge Amish Shah to put a hold on post-trial motions due to Trump’s Feb. 10 executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Some of the federal charges the four were convicted of stemmed from this law.

Trump’s order says the FCPA has been “systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused” in ways that hurt America’s interests. He gave the U.S. attorney general 180 days to evaluate investigations and enforcement actions under the FCPA. The U.S. attorney general can also report potential policy changes to him.

“To conserve judicial and party resources, Defendants respectfully request this Court stay proceedings in this case and defer its ruling on the pending Motion for Reconsideration until the Attorney General issues the revised guidelines or policies required by the Order and decides whether it will ‘specifically authorize’ the Government to continue prosecuting the FCPA counts in this case,” the attorneys wrote. 

While the verdict has been rendered, the ComEd Four defendants asked the court to reconsider, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion that narrowed federal bribery laws. 

In 2020, ComEd agreed to pay a fine of $200 million. ComEd also admitted to many of the details that became the foundation of this prosecution and the former speaker’s recent conviction. On Feb. 12, a jury convicted Madigan on 10 of the nearly two dozen federal charges he faced. He’s yet to be sentenced.