To hear David Ellis tell it, when ComEd came to Springfield in 2011 hoping to get some utility-friendly legislation passed, they ran into a brick wall named House Speaker Michael Madigan.

“They didn’t like anything I was doing,” Ellis, a state court appellate judge who used to work for the speaker’s office, told jurors Thursday in Madigan’s corruption trial. “I wouldn’t have expected them to.”

Ellis said he was instructed by the speaker to hold ComEd’s feet to the fire, insisting on job creation for Illinois residents, rate caps and a sunset provision that would ensure the company had to come back to the General Assembly and show it had kept its word.

“Did you give them any choice?” Madigan attorney Todd Pugh asked.

“No,” said Ellis. “We were not asking, we were not making suggestions, we were making demands.”

After some 50 prosecution witnesses in the blockbuster case against Madigan, the trial’s spotlight has finally turned to the defense, and several distinct themes of their case have emerged.

Among them: That despite his incredible political power, Madigan had no ability to wave a wand and pass legislation; that he used his reach to rein in greedy corporations and stand up for labor interests and blue-collar families; and that while companies may have made political hiring decisions to keep from “rocking the boat,” that’s just Springfield politics and not any illegal exchange.

It is an apparent attempt at legal judo, trying to turn prosecutors’ flood of evidence about Madigan’s strength into a weakness. To secure a conviction, the government must show not only that Madigan was powerful, but that he used it illegally to enrich himself and his allies on the side.

The racketeering indictment against Madigan, 82, the longtime House speaker who ran the state Democratic Party, and his longtime right-hand man, Michael McClain, 77, accuses them of using Madigan’s government and political operations to get cushy no-work contracts for loyalists and to drum up business for Madigan’s private law firm. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

The handful of defense witnesses so far have previewed other potential arguments the defense could make in closings next month.

Also noteworthy, Madigan and McClain’s defenses have largely been a united front, avoiding what McClain’s attorneys feared in several pretrial filings would be an attempt by Madigan to throw his old comrade under the bus.

Madigan and McClain’s defense began putting on witnesses last week before a long break for the Christmas holiday. Jurors are expected to be back in the box Jan. 2, and Madigan’s attorneys have said they have enough witnesses to fill the day, though they have not provided names.

Two major defense witnesses have already concluded their testimony, with notably mixed results.

One, former AT&T internal lobbyist Stephen Selcke, repeatedly said the company did not believe there was any expectation that hiring a Madigan ally meant their bill would pass — but also said they were nervous about negative reaction from the speaker if they didn’t make the hire.

Another, Andrew Cretal, testified he did not feel intimidated into hiring Madigan’s law firm for his West Loop real estate development — but also acknowledged it was highly unusual for a public official to ask for a sit-down and that he was so nervous going into the meeting that he brought a colleague along as a witness to what would happen.

Selcke, called as McClain’s sole defense witness, testified at length about AT&T’s decision to pay a former Democratic state representative $2,500 per month after getting an email from McClain asking, “Is there even a small contract for Eddie Acevedo?”

At the time, the telecom giant was deep into its effort to pass legislation to end mandated landline service, commonly referred to by the acronym COLR.

On questioning from McClain attorney John Mitchell, Selcke confirmed that McClain never threatened that Madigan would kill their legislation if Acevedo was not paid. And McClain didn’t make any promises about the bill’s success either, Selcke said.

“Did Mike McClain ever promise that if AT&T offered a job to Eddie Acevedo, Madigan would pass the COLR bill?” Mitchell asked.

“No,” Selcke said.

But the speaker’s office was certainly part of AT&T’s calculations when it decided to hire Acevedo, as became clear when Pugh questioned Selcke on Madigan’s behalf.

There was a multipronged effort to get the bill passed, Selcke said, but they certainly had to make sure they weren’t “rocking the boat with the speaker’s office,” a metaphor that quickly went off the rails when Pugh asked perhaps one too many questions about it.

“Mr. McClain never told you that the boat was going to be rocked, did he?” Pugh asked.

“No,” Selcke answered.

“You didn’t even know there was a boat?”

“No, we knew there was a boat,” Selcke said. “There was a boat. The boat being the speaker’s office.”

Selcke tried to expand on that, and Pugh kept interrupting him — earning criticism from the judge.

When prosecutors questioned Selcke, they mined the “rock the boat” comment for all it was worth, having Selcke reiterate that AT&T knew it was crucial to remain on neutral, if not positive, ground with the speaker.

And with Selcke on the stand, they showed jurors that McClain had asked AT&T to hire other Madigan allies in the past — a practice that Selcke, in an email, referred to as “folks crammed back down our throats.”

Cretal, meanwhile, was called by Madigan’s attorneys to discuss a meeting arranged by then-Ald. Daniel Solis, the influential Zoning Committee chairman who was working undercover for the government. Madigan had reached out asking Solis for an introduction to the developers of the Union West project, a luxury high-rise in Solis’ ward.

Solis set up the meeting with Cretal at Madigan’s firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, which ultimately was hired to do some work for Union West. Madigan’s attorney hired Cretal, the purported victim of Madigan’s alleged extortion attempt, in anticipation of Cretal telling jurors that he did not in fact feel victimized.

On questioning from Madigan’s attorneys, Cretal said he never felt intimidated or fearful or thought he had to hire Madigan’s firm to get what he wanted from Solis, who was not only alderman of the ward where Union West was located but also headed the influential City Council zoning committee.

But on cross-examination from prosecutors, Cretal said that in nearly two decades of experience in real estate he had never had a local official set up a meeting with a private business. He was nervous and apprehensive going into the meeting, and confirmed that he brought a colleague to have, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker put it, “a second set of eyes and ears.”

However, he testified, any nervousness dissipated after having the actual meeting with Madigan and his law partner, whom he found to be professional and knowledgeable.

Madigan’s defense also called longtime 13th Ward office employee April Burgos, who handled Madigan’s email and schedule.

She was, in part, put on the stand to testify that everyone in the ward got services, not just people who supported Madigan and the Democrats. But she also told jurors, in glowing terms, about Madigan the man.

“He’s one of the most nicest, genuine people I’ve ever met in my life,” Burgos said.

Yet to wrap up his testimony is Ellis, formerly a top lawyer at the speaker’s office who took part in negotiating the 2011 “Smart Grid” bill, which prosecutors allege was one focus of an overarching bribery scheme by the utility to win the speaker’s support.

Madigan’s priority was on protecting consumers, Ellis said, and he had no compunction about using the influence of the speaker’s office to put demands on the utility.

“I’m not going to trust ComEd to write legislation that isn’t anything but in their best interest,” Ellis said.

When Pugh asked Ellis if the speaker ever asked him to “go easy” on ComEd during negotiations, Ellis scoffed and said, “No, no, no.”

“If he had ever told me something like that, to go easy on somebody whose bill we were reviewing, I think I would have fallen out of my chair,” Ellis said.

Ellis is expected to continue his testimony after the holiday break.

One angle of defense that has not materialized is the idea that Madigan would try to pin any illegal activity on his old friend, McClain, and argue he didn’t know what McClain was up to when it came to some of the central allegations in the trial, from directing payments to subcontractors or taking care of a ward employee who’d been fired due to sexual harassment accusations.

In the months before trial, McClain’s attorneys argued he should be severed from Madigan’s case because of that concern, writing in a motion in July that McClain’s right to a fair trial was in peril due to a theory that Madigan’s defense that would essentially make them “second prosecutors,” putting McClain in the position of having to defend himself not only from government accusations but his co-defendant too.

McClain’s lawyers even hinted Madigan might try to ambush McClain with evidence of “other crimes, wrongs or bad acts” he’d committed, springing “otherwise undisclosed testimony, witnesses and exhibits against him throughout the trial.”

So far, though, the jurors have heard none of that, other than some questioning by Madigan’s defense team trying to cast doubt on whether McClain was honest when he said he was acting on the speaker’s behalf.

For example, Madigan attorney Tom Breen, when cross-examining former ComEd executive-turned-FBI cooperator Fidel Marquez in November, tried to portray McClain’s name-dropping as simply an empty attempt to scare ComEd into action.

Breen implied it would be ridiculous to think the state’s most powerful politician would have been concerned with low-level requests involving entry-level jobs and summer internships or billable hours to a clouted law firm.

“The person bringing you the message, he’s saying this is the message from the speaker?” Breen asked.

“That’s correct,” Marquez said.

“Your perception was that Michael Madigan was actually hands-on in the internships that ComEd provided kids? Do you really think that?” Breen asked Marquez.

But jurors have heard plenty of evidence of the closeness of the two men. According to testimony, the long-term relationship dates back to their days as young lawmakers in the 1970s. After McClain lost his House seat in the 1982 election, he went on to become a lobbyist and picked up several major clients, including ComEd, and became a power broker in Springfield largely because of his close relationship with Madigan.

Jurors have heard from a number of witnesses who said McClain was known to be Madigan’s “agent” or emissary, delivering sensitive messages directly from the speaker and conveying Madigan’s wishes. They’ve seen and heard McClain refer to Madigan by thinly veiled nicknames such as “our Friend” and “Himself,” monikers that were picked up by otherwise-professional Fortune 500 executives at ComEd and AT&T.

The jury has heard dozens of wiretapped phone calls between Madigan and McClain as well, discussing both sweeping political deals and the minutia of ward politics, plotting the ouster of a longtime House ally, Lou Lang, and joking about the size of the Exelon Utilities corporate jet.

And they’ve seen McClain’s personal note to the speaker when he retired from lobbying in 2016, saying he’d still be at the ready for special “assignments” whenever Madigan beckoned.

“I am at the bridge with my musket standing with and for the Madigan family,” McClain wrote at the time.

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