Chicago City Wire

Following the conviction of the ComEd Four Kathy Posner, a publicist and former government employee, is discussing her involvement in the case as a City Club of Chicago Board Member. 

“For 13 years I saved all the evidence I had collected in my investigation of Doherty and happily turned it over to the FBI in 2019 when an agent contacted me,” Posner said on Facebook. 

She mentioned that in 2009, as a member of the City Club Board of Governors, she turned over evidence to the Charitable Trust Bureau of the Office of the Illinois Attorney General that Jay Doherty was using the employees and facilities of City Club to run his lobbying business. 

“Lisa Madigan, daughter of Speaker of the Illinois House Michael Madigan, was the Attorney General at that time. Because City Club is a 501©3 his activities were in violation of the tax code for charities. This evidence included many Com Ed invoices and emails. The e-mail address that Doherty used in his lobbying correspondence was doherty@cityclub-chicago.com. That usage alone should have been enough direct evidence that he was using City Club as the base for his lobbying business,” Posner said. 

Subsequently, Posner continued, "the Charitable Trust Bureau allowed City Club to ‘self-investigate’ and of course, the Board claimed nothing had been going on.” 

“Dispute the 100’s of pieces of evidence they had proving the opposite, the Charitable Trust Bureau accepted the Board’s ‘internal investigation’ and closed the case,” she said. “Back in 2009, I did not know that the Com Ed correspondence and inflated invoices would become possible pieces of evidence of corruption as this trial has proved.” 

Posner recalled that she was voted off the Board of City Club due to her whistle-blowing. 

"At that meeting, with Jay Doherty smirking at me, he told me that I had to leave the room because I was no longer a Board member. As I left the room, I heard applause and laughter from ‘triumphant’ Board members that I had been vanquished,” she said. “In 2012 Chicago Magazine reporter David Bernstein wrote a story outlining what Jay Doherty was doing and still no action was taken at that time by the Charitable Trust Bureau, the IRS, or any investigative agency." 

Doherty being found guilty, 13 years after Posner originally brought his actions to the attention of the Charitable Trust, according to Posner proves that she "was correct in trying to expose what was going on and subsequently how wrong the Charitable Trust Bureau was in not taking action." 

Posner suggested that "Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul should re-open the original City Cub investigation to learn how and why the Charitable Trust bureau failed to investigate the case correctly and if the influence of Michael Madigan had anything to do with Lisa Madigan’s office closing their eyes to solid evidence of what Doherty was doing.” 

She shared links to these two Chicago magazine stories which she said outline what Doherty has been doing: Jay Doherty and the City Club of Chicago Under Fire and The Connector: Jay Doherty, His Clients, and the City Club Speakers.

Calls for ethics reform have been increasing after former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker along with Madigan’s right-hand man Michael McClain and Doherty, who previously ran the City Club of Chicago, were convicted of scheming to pay $1.3 million to Madigan-connected people and companies. The ComEd Four face sentencing in January 2024. As part of the scheme, ComEd provided jobs – some of which were no show – and contracts to those with connections to Madigan who at the time controlled the Democratic Party and had wielded power as the state’s most powerful politician as the longest-serving state House Speaker in the nation. ComEd, the state’s largest utility, engaged in the scheme to influence Madigan in order to get preferential treatment in the state House. Prosecutors called the foursome "grandmasters of corruption.” ComEd paid a $200 million fine in July 2020 and admitted to the scheme.

Posner previously worked as a Director of Financial Control IV. She made real estate headlines after putting two condos on the market on Michigan Avenue worth over $2 million combined.

Posner’s remark regarding Lisa Madigan is notable. City Journal in 2016 wrote about the importance of Madigan’s children in his orbit. 

“Madigan’s adopted daughter, Lisa Madigan, is Illinois attorney general and a likely future gubernatorial candidate,” City Journal wrote at the time. “His three other children’s careers, and those of their spouses, are also intertwined with his machine. Tiffany Madigan is a lawyer at a big firm that has donated money to Madigan’s campaigns. Her husband, Jordan Matyas, started out as a staffer in the speaker’s office, was chief of staff of the Regional Transportation Authority, and has now opened his own law firm that advertises his knowledge of state politics.” 

The article added, "Nicole Madigan is a real-estate lawyer who worked for a firm that contributed to Lisa’s campaign war chest and is now general counsel to a real-estate management firm in Chicago. Andrew Madigan is an analyst at a financial-services firm that receives state contracts and deals with city bonds.”

In Hunter Biden's emails, Lisa Madigan, the former attorney general of Illinois, was mentioned. The emails were sent at the same time that President Biden's sister Valerie Biden Owens informed the Biden campaign that Lisa Madigan had fired her media advisor and that Owens' organization hoped to be considered for the position in 2010. 

“Hunt - do you have any swat here - that would not be a chit if you weighed in- bc a chit is too expensive," Owen's email reads.   Eric - I know you would charge me a % !”