Yahoo News Cloutless in the jury room, will ex-Ald. Ed Burke get a Christmas wish or a lump of coal?
As the ultimate City Hall insider for decades, Ed Burke became a master of behind-the-scenes maneuvers that shaped Chicago and his own political fortunes.
But now his legacy will be decided behind closed doors, inside a backroom he cannot enter, and where he cannot wield his legendary clout.
In that room, nine women and three men will decide whether Burke will go down in history as one of the most powerful Chicago aldermen ever convicted of corruption or if he will join the thin ranks of Illinois politicians who beat a federal rap.
The verdict, which could come just before Christmas and days away from Burke’s 80th birthday, will reverberate throughout Chicago political circles no matter the outcome, and will surely be used by some at City Hall as a road map for how much wheeling and dealing they can legally do.
For Burke, it’s all on the line. He survived his anti-administration battles with Mayor Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor, during the 1980s “Council Wars” and rode numerous political ups and downs with mayors from Richard J. Daley through Lori Lightfoot.
But if he’s convicted of the more serious charges in the 14-count racketeering indictment, Burke stands to lose not just his legacy, but his freedom.
More than five years since FBI agents raided his City Hall offices in November 2018, Burke’s fight culminated last week when his lawyers gambled heavily on attacking ex-Ald. Daniel Solis, the FBI mole who recorded Burke in alleged schemes to shake down developers of the Old Post Office. It took Burke’s defense lawyers, not the government, to bring Solis in to testify, and they got him to acknowledge he cooperated with authorities to save himself from a trip to prison for his own misdeeds.
In a marathon stretch of closing arguments last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur contended, “Mr. Burke’s hand was out again and again, demanding money and benefits from the very people he was supposed to act on behalf of. Ed Burke was a powerful and corrupt politician and this was his racket.”
But Burke lawyer Joseph Duffy countered that prosecutors presented “a lot of noise and confusion,” full of recordings that were “shoved into evidence without a witness” and indictment that piles on charges, often multiple times for the same act.
“Throw it against the wall and let the poor jury figure it out,” Duffy said. “Why so many charges for the same act? I think my head is spinning.”
Given a major portion of the high-profile case against Burke is based on Solis’ recordings, Duffy maintained prosecutors’ decision to not bring in Solis to testify is enough in itself for jurors to find Burke not guilty.
“The main player, the entire post office scheme, the government of the United States didn’t call him,” Duffy shouted. “Reasonable doubt? Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how you get reasonable doubt.”
Duffy told the largely suburban jurors that City Hall was an open book, including Burke, who knew the guardrails between public and private life and was meticulous in avoiding votes on matters involving his law clients.
But the trial’s unvarnished video and audio told a different story. They showed Burke could speak quite differently when he thought his cellphone and closed-door City Hall conversations were private, allegedly using words far from the statesmanlike image he long cultivated.
Jurors could hear Burke when he used an expletive in a private meeting with Solis, and could see him smile as he spoke about Jews and their business practices while allegedly plotting how to leverage business for his law firm from the Old Post Office’s main developer. He blurted out in one tape that “the cash register has not rung yet,” and he most notably asked Solis about getting tax work with the classic political line, “Have we landed the, uh, the tuna?”
MacArthur seized on Burke’s words and told jurors what the alderman really wondered about was a potential windfall of legal business for his law firm, saying he was trying to reel in the “financial tuna.”
Duffy acknowledged Burke flashed anger at times and spoke in poor taste, but maintained Burke’s words and actions did not constitute a crime.
In court Friday, Duffy told jurors that prosecutors wanted to keep Solis off of the witness stand because is he untrustworthy and a “con man.”
Duffy further emphasized how, in addition to Solis, the government also did not call post office developer Harry Skydell, “another witness in the middle of the entire (Post Office) episode.”
Duffy said the jury can infer why: “He would not have supported the government’s theory. He was not a victim. He also, like Mr. Burke, was harassed by Danny Solis.”
One key reason the Old Post Office allegations drew so much attention is because they go to the heart of the overarching racketeering count against Burke, a charge with a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
MacArthur told jurors Burke performed as many as five acts that led to his racketeering charge, but it takes only two of those five acts “in any combination” to convict him, such as by showing a pattern of using similar victims, time frames and methods to get what he wanted.
Two example — enough to qualify for a racketeering conviction — are baked into Burke’s alleged efforts to shake down developers of the Old Post Office, according to the charges.
Burke faces charges in three other alleged schemes, each with an alleged act that could be counted toward the elements necessary to convict Burke on racketeering: trying to extort owners of a Burger King in his ward for legal business, trying to leverage a job at the Field Museum for the daughter of former 32nd Ward Ald. Terry Gabinski; and attempting to help a developer who offered Burke’s law firm business in exchange for his assistance in getting a permit to install a pole sign for a Binny’s Beverage Depot in Portage Park.
Burke’s defense strategy included putting Solis on the witness stand in an attempt to challenge the government’s version of events, crush his credibility and push him to say he enticed Burke into making any of his disputed comments by feeding him FBI-scripted lies.
Chris Gair, another veteran attorney on Burke’s legal team, came close to throwing Solis off stride during his testimony on Tuesday, pressing him over how much influence Burke actually had over the Old Post Office renovation.
The real “boss,” according to Gair, was then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who championed the $600 million project, easily won City Council approval of major tax breaks for the developers and personally recruited Walgreens to anchor the long-vacant complex.
If Solis wanted someone with the political power to slash through layers of bureaucracy without breaking a sweat, Gair asked, couldn’t he have just called Rahm?
“It’s not that simple,” Solis responded curtly. “The mayor’s not God. There’s always problems that have to be dealt with.”
“I didn’t ask you if the mayor was God!” Gair shot back. Mostly stoic during the trial, Burke cracked a faint smile following the exchange.
Gair focused on parts of the secret recordings in which Burke made comments that portrayed him as sincerely interested in civic engagement and challenged Solis on whether his motives for cooperating with authorities were less than high-minded.
“This was not out of some public spirit on your part, correct?” Gair asked.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘public spirit,’ ” Solis replied.
In a harsh rejoinder, Gair shot back: “I know you don’t know what I mean by ‘public spirit,’ sir.”
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall limited how far the defense team could go, particularly since prosecutors did not call Solis in their case in chief against Burke. The government used Solis’ audio and video recordings for the narrow purpose of capturing what Burke said and did, but not to hold up what Solis said as truthful.
Prosecutors, in fact, acknowledged Solis lied frequently to Burke as part of a legally permissible law enforcement tactic.
Kendall also would not allow Burke’s team to bring out details about the alleged crimes that led to Solis’ cooperation, though Burke’s lawyers did all they could to urge jurors to think long and hard about what Solis must have done to get himself jammed up.
Jurors, therefore, did not hear a complete explanation of how Solis ended up facing only a one-count criminal information that alleged he corruptly solicited campaign donations from a real estate developer in exchange for zoning changes in 2015, when Solis chaired the City Council’s zoning committee.
That charge against Solis will be dropped if he continues to cooperate, including on the case against former House Speaker Michael Madigan, the ex-chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party who faces a separate racketeering trial April 1.
Solis will soon mark the fifth anniversary of getting his walk-free deal, which he signed one day after Christmas 2018. The U.S. attorney’s office kept the agreement secret for nearly 3 ½ years before finally putting it on the record last year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said at the time that Solis personally made “hundreds of recordings” and hailed his cooperation as perhaps “singular” even in Chicago’s long history of political corruption.
Besides racketeering, the rest of the 14 charges against Burke, who will turn 80 on Dec. 29, include federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce, such as through a cellphone or email, to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Despite years of spinning eloquent tales as he jousted with colleagues on the City Council floor, Burke chose not to take the witness stand himself.
Duffy on Friday closed out his arguments by framing Burke as he surely would like to be remembered in the sunset of his career: A hardworking public servant with vast institutional knowledge of Chicago.
“(He was) elected or reelected 13 times by his constituents. The people that know him the best like him and appreciate who he is,” Duffy said. “He was also influential because he cared about the city and its residents. He was driven by a desire to do what’s best for the city and its people.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, urged jurors to listen instead to how Burke talked when he thought nobody was listening.
He didn’t talk about smoothing the way for the Old Post Office because it was a benefit to the city, or worry that the lack of a Burger King driveway permit would create a safety hazard, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said. He had his eye on his own pocket.
”What he does say, over and over and over again, is his expressions of concern over benefiting himself,” she said. “Not the city of Chicago, not his ward. Enriching himself through business for his private law firm.”
