Former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke was convicted by a federal jury Thursday of racketeering conspiracy and a dozen other counts for using the clout of his elected office to win private law business from developers.
The guilty verdict on the marquee charge of the indictment capped a stunning fall for Burke, the former head of the city Finance Committee and Democratic political machine master who served a record 54 years in the City Council before stepping down in May.
The jury deliberated for about 23 hours over four days before reaching its verdict in the 19-count indictment.
In addition to racketeering, Burke was also convicted 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 17.
Before the verdict was read in Kendall’s packed 25th Floor 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, tapped on his wrist with his hand and took out a cell phone, 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. After the jury left, he stood and shook hands with two of his attorneys before exiting the courtroom.
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.
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Cui was not present in court due to an undisclosed illness, and listened to the verdict being read against him via a telephone hookup.
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.
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.
A clean-sweep acquittal is rare at the Dirksen U.S. 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.
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.
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 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 more 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,” Burke attorney Joseph Duffy said. “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.”
Burke’s trial is the biggest to hit Chicago’s federal courthouse in years and rounds out a bombshell year on the public corruption front, even for a city used to seeing its politicians face 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 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 that in the Madigan probe. For all of Burke’s power, the trial evidence showed him in the late stages of his career fretting about relatively mundane matters, including driveway permits, a pole sign, and an overlooked internship application.
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.
At this zenith, Burke had become 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 “Council Wars.” He cynically paved the way for his wife to become chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. He 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 longtime allies, former Alds. Edward Vrodolyak and Fred Roti.
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 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.
The Burger King episode was the most significant scheme in which the target of the alleged shakedown actually testified, and Dhanani’s time on the stand hit at the heart of the corruption allegations.
Dhanani, the CEO of a Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, 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
The Dhananis’ company did not end up formally hiring Burke’s firm. Another executive later testified that he declined to retain Klafter & Burke due to a “gut feeling” about their competence.
Jurors also heard meticulously detailed evidence about a pole sign permit for a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side – far away from Burke’s 14th Ward.
Co-defendant Charles Cui is accused of hiring Burke’s law firm so that Burke would use his clout to help with the permit. Cui stood to lose significant money if the sign couldn’t be used, and he scrambled to get the permit approved.
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 emailed. “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.