CHICAGO — Seven weeks ago, officials at Chicago’s federal courthouse used brown butcher paper to cover up large hallway displays highlighting infamous political corruption cases, featuring names like Walker, Ryan, Blagojevich and Vrdolyak.
On Thursday, a federal jury added another name to that inglorious roster: Edward M. Burke.
In a verdict that will reverberate through city politics, Burke was convicted of racketeering conspiracy and a dozen other counts for using the clout of his elected office to try to win private law business from developers.
The nearly clean sweep of guilty verdicts capped a stunning fall for Burke, the former head of the city Finance Committee and a Democratic political machine master who served a record 54 years in the City Council before stepping down in May.
The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for about 23 hours over four days before reaching its verdict on the 19-count indictment.
In addition to racketeering, Burke also was found guilty of federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
He was acquitted on one count of conspiracy to commit extortion related to the redevelopment of a Burger King.
The racketeering charge alone carries up to 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall set sentencing for June.
The jurors left the courthouse through a private exit, and most did not respond to calls seeking comment. One juror who did speak to the Chicago Tribune, however, said Thursday that the mood in the jury room was meticulous and diligent, and that they re-listened to each and every wiretapped recording at the center of the case, some of them multiple times.
The juror, who requested anonymity, said there was a “clear consensus” that the exhibits and now-infamous recordings gave them “just about everything that was needed to make a decision.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual told reporters after the verdict that Burke’s actions were a clear betrayal of the public trust.
“In this case, defendant Burke had his hand out for money,” Pasqual said. “The public voted Mr. Burke into office. And they trusted that he would be guided by and motivated by pursuing the common good. He betrayed that trust.”
With his conviction, Burke, who turns 80 on Dec. 29, has now joined the ignoble ranks of at least 38 other Chicago aldermen to be convicted of crimes since 1972. Three aldermen died while awaiting trial, while charges are pending against two others. Only one, Ray Frias, was acquitted.
The city’s well-worn reputation for corruption was front and center for Burke’s trial, beginning even in jury selection, when Burke’s attorneys requested that the 25th-floor hallway panels featuring some of the biggest cases through the years be covered up so as not to sway jurors who might see them.
Asked if Burke’s conviction might finally make a dent in the City Council’s history of corruption, Pasqual paused, gave a slight smile, and said, “That’s the $64,000 question.”
Before the verdict was read in Kendall’s packed courtroom, Burke arrived with his wife, former Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke, and other family members, turning to smile at spectators in the gallery before taking a seat at the defense table.
As the courtroom waited for the jury to come out, Burke, dressed in a black suit and uncharacteristic flat black tie, tapped on his wrist with his hand and took out a cellphone, appearing to scroll through messages.
As the verdict was read, Burke listened with a deep frown on his face, keeping his elbows on the table, his hands clasped and propping up his chin as his face flushed. After the jury left, he stood and shook hands with two of his attorneys before exiting the courtroom.
Burke left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse not long afterward, arm in arm with his wife and flanked by his attorneys. He declined to answer questions as he ducked into a waiting SUV on South Dearborn Street.
He pulled up to his hulking, fortress-like home on West 51st Street shortly after 4 p.m., carrying a green briefcase and wearing a brown hat and coat. He and his wife were composed as Burke opened the inner gate to the home, ignoring questions from reporters.
Burke’s attorneys, Joseph Duffy and Chris Gair, declined to comment after the verdict.
Also convicted was real estate developer Charles Cui, who was accused of hiring Burke’s firm, Klafter & Burke, to do property tax appeals in exchange for Burke’s intervention in a permit dispute for a pole sign for a Binny’s Beverage Depot.
Cui, 52, was not present in court due to an undisclosed illness, and listened to the verdict being read against him via a telephone hookup. The jury found him guilty on five counts: corruptly offering or agreeing to give things of value; using an interstate facility to promote unlawful activity; and knowingly making a false statement to the FBI.
Meanwhile, Burke’s longtime ward aide Peter Andrews Jr. was acquitted of all counts against him. Andrews, 74, was accused of conspiring with Burke to pressure the Texas-based owners of 150 Chicago-area Burger King franchises into hiring Klafter & Burke by shutting down their renovation project of a restaurant in the 14th Ward.
A complete acquittal is rare in Chicago’s federal courthouse, particularly in a high-profile corruption case. After the not-guilty findings were read, Andrews got up to embrace his attorneys, then sat down, leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling with a broad smile on his face.
In a statement, Andrews’ attorneys called the indictment an “overreach” and said the acquittal was “a well-deserved Christmas blessing.”
“On behalf of our client, we are grateful to the twelve jurors who understood what we have known for over four years: Pete Andrews did not belong in this indictment,” attorneys Patrick Blegen, Todd Pugh, Chelsy Van Overmeiren and Gabrielle Foley wrote.
There was no such good news for Burke, who was convicted not only of counts involving the Burger King and pole sign schemes, but also of using his significant City Hall power to try to get law business from the New York-based developers tackling the $600 million renovation of the Old Post Office.
The jury also found Burke guilty of attempting to extort the Field Museum by threatening to block an admission fee increase in retaliation against museum officials who failed to acknowledge an internship application by his goddaughter.
The high-profile, six-week trial featured some 38 witnesses and more than 100 secretly recorded videos and wiretapped recordings, offering a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of Chicago’s top political powerbrokers at work.
At the heart of the case were dozens of wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded meetings made by Daniel Solis, the former 25th Ward alderman who turned FBI mole after being confronted in 2016 with his own wrongdoing.
In closing arguments last week, prosecutors put up on large video screens a series of now-notorious statements made by Burke on the recordings. Among them: “The cash register has not rung yet,” “They can go (expletive) themselves,” and “Did we land the tuna?”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker told the jury that Burke’s words were their ticket into his real frame of mind.
Burke’s attorneys, meanwhile, argued that the entire case is the product of overzealous government agents and their puppet, Solis, whom even prosecutors did not trust enough to put on the witness stand themselves. Instead, he was called by the defense and grilled about his motivations.
“The fact alone that they didn’t call Danny Solis in their case creates a reasonable doubt,” Duffy said in his closing remarks. “Why did we have to bring Danny Solis in here? That should give you pause, the fact that they ran an investigation on Mr. Burke for 30 months with a star witness Danny Solis undercover and they didn’t have the decency to bring him here.”
The juror who spoke to the Tribune on Thursday said the panel felt Solis’ testimony was largely “irrelevant.”
“Nothing he said had any bearing on the evidence,” the juror said, and so it made no difference that the government chose not to call him.
The most “spirited” discussions involved the charges against Andrews, according to the juror. They were not persuaded that Andrews was even aware of any scheme to shake down the Burger King, the juror said.
By the same logic, jurors acquitted Burke of conspiring with Andrews, since “to have a conspiracy you have to have more than one co-conspirator.”
But Cui “wrote some very damning emails,” the juror said, making their decision on those counts easy.
Chicago’s long history of corrupt politicians did not factor into the deliberations, the juror said.
“This case was an island,” the juror said. “(The charges) sit on their own merit.”
The verdicts drew quick reaction from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who said in a statement that elected officials are “responsible for serving with honest and integrity,” and those that do not should be held accountable.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who clashed with Burke repeatedly and used his legal troubles to her political advantage when she won the job on City Hall’s fifth floor in 2019, had even harsher words, saying in a statement the verdict cements Burke’s legacy as “a man who elevated personal ambition and greed over doing the people’s work.”
Burke’s trial was the biggest to hit Chicago’s federal courthouse in years, and it rounds out a bombshell year on the public corruption front, even for a city used to seeing its politicians facing criminal charges.
So far, it’s been close to a clean sweep for the U.S. attorney’s office. In May, four former ComEd executives and lobbyists were convicted on all charges alleging they conspired to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, the head of the state Democratic Party, by secretly funneling payments to Madigan’s friends for do-nothing jobs.
Months later, a jury convicted Madigan’s longtime chief of staff, Tim Mapes, of lying to a federal grand jury investigation into the speaker.
In four months, it will be Madigan’s turn in the hot seat, as his jury trial on racketeering charges is slated to begin on April 1. His lawyers have moved to delay the trial, however, pending a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on a bribery-related case out of northwest Indiana that could have implications on certain counts.
Burke’s trial, meanwhile, has featured allegations of a decidedly more earthy, “where’s mine?” type of graft than in the Madigan probe.
It’s a trial that in many ways has reflected the man and his career. The son of a Democratic ward boss and alderman, Burke grew up in a home steeped in Chicago’s particular brand of street-level politics. He was expert at smoothing potholes, fixing up friends with patronage jobs, and making sure everyone who benefited knew how to vote — and for whom to vote.
Burke became one of the greatest purveyors of machine politics in the city and the longest-serving alderman in Chicago history. He earned infamy in the 1980s for trying to thwart every move of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, during the “Council Wars.” He allegedly ran the council’s Finance Committee like his own personal fiefdom, all while overseeing a law firm, that constantly put him into ethically questionable positions.
He was known as an anointer of judges given his control of the Democratic judicial slate-making process, a student of Chicago history, and the self-proclaimed City Council parliamentarian who always seemed able to outmaneuver his rivals with his knowledge of rules and procedure.
Over the years, Burke also developed a reputation for being too savvy to ever be caught crossing any legal lines, even as he watched a never-ending parade of colleagues go down on corruption charges, including his predecessor on the Finance Committee, Ald. Thomas Keane.
That reputation went up in flames on the morning of Nov. 29, 2018, when the FBI raided Burke’s City Hall office suite, covered the windows with brown butcher paper, and carted off computers, phones and boxes of evidence.
The centerpiece of the case against Burke was the alleged Old Post Office scheme, not only because of the size of the project but also because it involved Solis, who had just started his cooperation when Burke approached him at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and pushed a local contractor to handle the post office demolition work.
Weeks later, Solis recorded Burke in a telephone call telling him to “recommend the good law firm of Klafter & Burke to do the tax work” at an upcoming meeting with the post office developer, Harry Skydell.
That call set off a series of memorable recordings, including one video that showed Burke welcoming Skydell and his son at one City Hall meeting, then sliding two Klafter & Burke business cards toward them. Later, he was caught on camera smirking as he told Solis he was reluctant to help Skydell because “the cash register has not rung yet.”
In May 2017, Burke uttered what is perhaps the most famous line in the indictment, asking Solis on a recorded call, “So did we land, uh, the tuna?”
And, after months of being stonewalled, Burke was captured sitting in Solis’ office with his legs crossed, calmly remarking he’d had it with the Skydells, and “as far as I’m concerned they can go (expletive) themselves.”
The final wiretapped recording made by Solis came on Nov. 9, 2018, just 20 days before the FBI raid that thrust the investigation into the public spotlight.
As instructed by his FBI handlers, Solis told Burke in the in-person meeting that he was planning to retire midway through his next four-year term, and then “go off into the sunset.” He also told Burke he had a line in on some big-time developers who were planning on a development near South Clark Street in Solis’ 25th Ward and would steer them to Klafter & Burke for a consulting fee.
“Sure. As long as you remember me, yeah,” Burke responded. “We come from the old school.”
Through the Burger King evidence, prosecutors portrayed Burke as constantly trawling for business, jumping at any chance to make a little money.
He took personal note of the status of construction at the Burger King location on South Pulaski Road, passed out his law firm’s business card at a country club meeting with its owner, Shoukat Dhanani, and told Andrews to play hardball and shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through, according to trial testimony.
Dhanani testified that he agreed to hire Burke’s firm in order to get the alderman to lift roadblocks to remodeling his restaurant, and also sent a political donation to support Burke’s candidate for mayor.
Dhanani’s son, Zohaib, told the jury he was “taken aback” when Burke seemed to link the hiring of his property tax firm to help with the permit issue in a phone call just two weeks after they’d had lunch at the Beverly Country Club.
“And, um, we were going to talk about the real estate tax representation and you were going to have somebody get in touch with me so we can expedite your permits,” Burke said on the June 2017 call.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Burke, what was that last part?” Zohaib Dhanani responded.
Jurors also heard meticulously detailed evidence about a pole sign permit for the Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side, far away from Burke’s 14th Ward. Cui stood to lose significant money if the sign couldn’t be used, and reached out to Burke, hoping his clout would grease the wheels with the city.
In perhaps the most damning evidence of the pole sign episode, jurors were shown a 2017 email from Cui to his lawyer, asking to switch attorneys.
“Can I have Edward Burke handle 4901 W Irving Park property tax appeal for me, at least for this year?” Cui wrote. “I need his favor for my TIF money. In addition I need his help for my zoning etc for my project. He is a powerful broker in City Hall, and I need him now. I’ll transfer the case back to you after this year.”
Burke tried to smooth the way for the permit sign, jurors heard, calling the city zoning administrator and reaching out the the buildings commissioner. The permit, however, was still not approved, and ultimately the sign was torn down.
The Field Museum evidence was the only allegation that did not involve Burke’s law firm. Instead, Burke was accused of threatening to withhold his approval of a proposed fee increase for the museum because they did not consider an internship application from his goddaughter.
“If the chairman of the Committee on Finance calls the president of the Park Board, your proposal is going to go nowhere,” Burke snapped on a phone call with the museum’s government affairs director.
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Jason Meisner, Ray Long and Megan Crepeau, Caroline Kubzansky Chicago Tribune
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