CHICAGO (CN) — Ed Burke, the former Chicago alderman convicted last December on 13 federal charges related to extortion, bribery and racketeering, filed a motion for acquittal late Wednesday night on eight of those charges.
The disgraced politician — who also holds the title of Chicago's longest serving city council member — disputed government evidence and federal prosecutors' legal theories, arguing "no rational jury" should have been able to find him guilty.
"Edward Burke was convicted at trial on a number of counts which, given the Court’s instructions and the evidence, no rational jury could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt," Burke claims in the motion. "Mr. Burke is entitled to judgment of acquittal on those charges."
Jurors convicted Burke just a few days before Christmas, with the counts against him stemming from four episodes between 2016 and 2018. All but one involved Burke's efforts to coerce or convince various property and business owners to hire his law firm Klafter & Burke, now rebranded as KBC Law Group.
Prosecutors say Burke illegally held up renovations to a Burger King in his city ward in 2017 until the wealthy franchise owners Shoukat and Zohaib Dhanani implied they would hire Burke's private law firm. They never actually did.
Prosecutors further accused Burke of taking bribes from local business owner Charles Cui — similarly in the form of tax work for Klafter & Burke — in 2017. In exchange, Burke tried, unsuccessfully, to help Cui get permits for a pole sign for one of his commercial tenants: a liquor store called Binny's. Cui ended up Burke's codefendant at trial last year, and was similarly convicted.
U.S. attorneys also said Burke refused to help move along renovations at Chicago's historic Old Post Office building from 2016 to 2018 until one of the developers' affiliates hired the law firm. Much of this segment of the case was built on recordings of Burke's conversations that ex-city alderman-turned FBI mole Danny Solis secretly captured, including Burke's famous line asking if they had "landed the tuna" and signed on the Old Post Office's developers as legal clients.
The only episode not involving Klafter & Burke stems from late 2017, when prosecutors say Burke threatened to kill a planned visitor fare hike at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History unless the museum offered his goddaughter a job.
In his motion for acquittal, Burke questions all but the counts stemming exclusively from the Burger King episode, and he most extensively challenges the RICO charge he faced. It was the largest single component of his indictment and related to all four episodes. Barring an acquittal on this count, he seeks a new trial on the grounds that there was no discernible pattern of racketeering activity as required under the law.
"The 'pattern of racketeering activity' element of count one required proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Burke committed at least two racketeering acts which were 'related to each other' and had 'continuity between them' but which were also separate acts," Burke argues.
Similarly, the ex-alderman is asking for a new trial on the federal bribery charge prosecutors indicted him on, given that the Supreme Court is set to reexamine the relevant bribery law in the case Snyder v. U.S. out of Portage, Indiana. The case questions whether the law criminalizes gratuities — that is, payments an official may have taken in recognition of their past actions or actions they have committed to take, absent any direct quid pro quo exchange.
The government claims Burke exchanged favors for work at Klafter & Burke, but it specifically did not accuse Burke of ever taking direct quid quo pro payments; prosecutors even told jurors in their opening statements last November that he was "too sophisticated" for that.
"Given the Supreme Court’s certiorari grant and the composition of this Supreme Court — which has repeatedly limited the scope of federal public corruption law — there is a strong possibility that the Supreme Court will limit the scope of [the bribery law] and decide that jury instructions like ones given here which could permit a jury to convict on a gratuity theory require the grant of the new trial," Burke argues in his motion.
Former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, also facing a slew of federal racketeering and bribery charges, won a six-month reprieve from his own trial last month as the Supreme Court considers the case.
Follow @djbyrnes1
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
