Even as a heavyweight politician constantly in the Chicago spotlight, Ed Burke lived a double life, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Outwardly he was the most powerful and longest-serving alderman on the City Council, leading the Finance Committee for decades, according to prosecutors. But secretly, he was something else.
“He was a bribe-taker and he was an extortionist,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman told jurors as opening statements in Burke’s landmark racketeering trial finally got underway. “(His) corruption rose from the very potent intersection of opportunity and power.”
Displaying a photo of the entrance to Burke’s longtime third-floor City Hall office suite, Chapman said the veil over Burke’s corruption was only pierced when prosecutors were able to secure the cooperation of his colleague, then-Ald. Daniel Solis, in 2016, leading to dozens of wiretapped calls and recorded meetings that will lay out Burke’s illegal schemes in real time.
“You at this trial are going to get to go behind those office doors, and see, and most importantly hear, how Ed Burke offered to sell his official position with the city of Chicago in exchange for law firm business,” Chapman said.
The defense, meanwhile, called the allegations a “story” unrooted in fact. In his opening statement, Burke attorney Chris Gair painted Burke as a zealous public servant, a proud lawyer and enthusiastic Chicagoan who made all those phone calls simply to help people.
Then Gair thrust his finger in the air and turned up the volume.
“Mr. Burke never asked for anything from anyone in this case. Not for money, not for legal business, not for anything — never,” Gair said, claiming Burke saw “not one dime” from the alleged schemes.
“This is a bribery case without bribes and an extortion case without extortion,” he said.
Walking over to Burke, who was seated at the defense table in a dark suit and blue plaid pocket square, Gair put his hands on the former alderman’s shoulders as he described him as an upstanding family man.
Gair then turned his sights on Solis, putting up the former 25th Ward alderman’s photo in court and calling it “Exhibit A in the world of people who are corrupt and untruthful.”
“Danny Solis wired up on everybody and his sister,” Gair said. “I mean literally! He recorded his sister for the government.”
Nothing about Solis recording his sister has ever been suggested in pretrial filings, and Gair offered no further details on the allegation.
Gair also hammered on what he said were the “pack of lies” Solis fed to Burke over the months of his secret cooperation, dangling the false prospect of law business in an effort to get Burke to bite. “He did it for two years with one object in mind: keep himself from going to prison, save his skin” Gair said. “And it worked.”
[ Ed Burke trial: What you need to know ]
Although prosecutors have opted not to put Solis on the witness stand, Burke’s lawyers have promised to call him as their own witness, though Gair did not mention it to the jury in his remarks Thursday.
The opening statements from the lawyers were a first volley in one of the most significant public corruption trials at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in years. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall’s 25th floor courtroom was at near capacity.
Gair’s opening statement was cut off after about 40 minutes because trial was ending for the day. He’s slated to continue Friday morning, followed by attorneys for Burke’s two co-defendants.
The son of a Democratic ward boss and alderman, Burke, 79, served more than 50 years on the City Council and allegedly ran the Finance Committee like his own personal fiefdom before his office was dramatically raided by the FBI in November 2018.
Burke, who left the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Burke’s longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.
The third defendant, Lake Forest real estate developer Charles Cui, 52, is charged with one count of federal program bribery, three counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.
Opening statements began after four days of jury selection and a weeklong COVID-related delay. A jury of nine women and three men were sworn in Thursday afternoon, kicking off a trial that could last past Christmas.
In his 90-minute opening, Chapman outlined the four “episodes” central to the indictment where Burke allegedly shook down businessmen and others who needed action at City Hall.
The first incident displayed a flash of Burke’s “anger,” Chapman said, as he explained how Burke threatened to block a proposed fee increase at the Field Museum. The reason? Burke had recommended the daughter of his former City Council buddy, ex-Ald. Terry Gabinski, 32nd, for an internship at the Field and she failed to get it, Chapman said.
Field officials allegedly responded by setting up a number of meetings and coming up with the idea of offering Gabinski’s daughter a public relations position, one which she eventually didn’t accept.
The Park District oversees the Field activities, but officials usually wanted Burke’s imprimatur — a point he knew he could use as leverage, especially if he reached out to park officials, Chapman said.
At one point, Chapman put up quotes from a wiretap where Burke allegedly made a “clear threat” to kill the Field Museum’s proposed fee increase.
“I’m sure I know what you want to do because if the chairman of the Committee on Finance calls the president of the Park Board your proposal’s gonna go nowhere,” Burke said in the dressing-down.
In the other three episodes, Chapman said Burke took action in his official public capacity in exchange for tax business for his private law firm simply “to line his own pockets with money.”
The Texas-based owners of a Burger King in Burke’s ward drew his interest when they wanted to remodel, particularly given that they owned around 130 of the fast-food restaurants in the Chicago area, Chapman said.
Burke tried to woo them into giving his law firm the tax business in exchange for cutting through city red tape, Chapman said.
And when that didn’t happen, Burke gave the green light to Andrews to get aggressive.
“I took ‘em to lunch. I was playing nice with ‘em. Never got back,” Burke said in a call highlighted by Chapman.
“All right, I’ll play as hardball as I can,” Andrews responded.
The Burger King owners never did end up giving Burke their business.
Another episode involved Cui, who prosecutors alleged was desperate to get a permit for a pole sign on a Northwest Side property he was redeveloping. If if he didn’t, he could lose out on $750,000 through a lease amendment with Binny’s Beverage Depot, which wanted to use the sign, Chapman said. That in turn could threaten the entire project, costing him millions in TIF money.
Cui switched some of his business to Burke’s firm “solely to get Ed Burke’s clout,” Chapman said, and Burke immediately started pulling strings to get Cui what he wanted, even though the sign permit never actually came through.
The longest-running alleged scheme involved the $600 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office, whose significant square footage represented a huge potential payday for Klafter & Burke, prosecutors said.
Burke became “fixated” on getting tax business from the New York-based developers, Chapman said. Using Solis as a go-between and promising him a kickback in return, Burke told the developers he had significant power in Chicago, then withheld his help with a tax-increment financing issue until they had his law firm represent another of their buildings, prosecutors said.
Jurors were also told of some of Burke’s now-infamous quotes about the Post Office matter, including Burke saying the “cash register has not rung yet,” telling Solis the developers “can go (expletive) themselves,” and the line that has already become part of the city’s political lexicon: “So did we land the, uh, the tuna?”
“The only tuna to be landed at this point was (the developer) as a client of Klafter & Burke,” Chapman said.
Over his roughly 40 minutes of argument Thursday, Gair alleged the post office scheme was almost entirely the work of Solis, who, in an attempt to give the FBI what they wanted, led Burke to think the developers would throw him tax business.
The defense played five short clips from the videos Solis recorded on a surreptitious body camera. In contrast to the aggressive and profane Burke quotes that prosecutors highlighted, the videos show the alderman calmly reiterating his willingness to color inside the lines.
In one, Burke reminds Solis that getting involved in a certain tax matter would be a conflict of interest. In another, Burke says he will defer to Solis about a tax-increment financing deal for the post office development, since the project was in Solis’ ward.
“Bottom line is, I will do anything that you want me to do, OK?” Burke says on the video. “I don’t care about these guys, if we get business we get business, if we don’t I’m gonna do whatever you want me to do.”
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“That is the opposite of being fixated on getting tax business,” Gair said.