WBEZ’ Tony Arnold has uncovered another email relating to lobbyist and Mike Madigan intimate Mike McClain’s email about patronage employee misconduct, ghost employees and a rape cover-up in Champaign County.

The last ring of the ripple was the revelation that State Senator John Sullivan had received a copy of McClain’s email.

Sullivan was the State Senator for the man in question, who has been identified as Forrest Ashby.

Ashby left state service to become a contract employee for the State Police Training Board.

Governor JB Pritzker made sure Ashby’s contract was terminated.

The most recent revelation is that Sullivan doesn’t seem to have ignored the McClain email, as he originally said.

WBEZ reports,

One document appears to show Sullivan, who earlier had been a state senator, took a more direct role than he had previously disclosed in trying to avert state disciplinary action against Ashby.

On Aug. 1, 2012, one day after McClain’s email, Randy Wells, former deputy chief of staff and legislative affairs director for the state Department of Human Services, notified former Quinn aide Gary Hannig and another DHS official about an unspecified “human resource issue with Senator Sullivan.”

Wells said pending action by the agency would result in “an extremely negative reaction” from Sullivan. Ashby, an employee of DHS, was not singled out by name in the Wells email, but it appears to relate directly to Ashby’s disciplinary case, a source familiar with the document told WBEZ.

“Senator Sullivan has already told me he is going to Gary and the Governor about this issue if we take action,” Wells wrote in the document.