Rich Hein/Sun-Times file photo
While the lawmaker committee investigating House Speaker Michael Madigan did not find wrongdoing on his part, his path to another term as speaker likely remains slim.
He’s still six votes short.
Charlie Wheeler, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield who reported on Madigan for more than two decades, said the only thing that could change the minds of some Democratic lawmakers would be for U.S. Attorney John Lausch to declare Madigan “spotless as a newborn babe.”
Since that isn’t going to happen, for a Democratic lawmaker, who has already publicly opposed Madigan as speaker, to now flip in his favor “would be political suicide,” Wheeler said.
Last Updated On: Dec 18 2020 08:06 Gmt+3
After deferring action in response to Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems for nearly a year and a half, the Donald Trump administration announced on Monday the imposition of U.S. sanctions required by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).
The set of sanctions targeting the Turkish agency responsible for the procurement, Turkey’s Defence Industries Directorate (SSB), its head, İsmail Demir, and three other senior officials are narrow because Turkey is not the primary target of CAATSA.
The law was passed in 2017 largely to counter Russian interventions in Ukraine, Syria, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, along with other measures targeting Iran and North Korea. CAATSA mandates secondary sanctions like those imposed on the SSB and its leadership as a means to deny Russia’s defence sector revenue by deterring the purchase of Russian military exports.