CHICAGO (CN) — A federal jury on Thursday found Ed Burke, the longest-serving city councilor in Chicago's history, guilty on all but one of the 14 charges he faced related to bribery, extortion and racketeering.
Burke's two co-defendants, former ward aide Peter Andrews and local property owner Charles Cui, were acquitted and convicted, respectively, of all the counts they faced — the feds accused both of making false statements to the FBI, and claimed Andrews was complicit in Burke's extortion efforts of a Burger King franchise's owners. Cui, the prosecutors said, knowingly bribed Burke in order to curry his "favor" and win the then-alderman's aid with property permitting issues.
Burke sat calmly in the courtroom with his head on his hands as he listened to the verdict being read, more than a month after trial began. He was accompanied by his wife Anne Burke, a former Illinois Supreme Court justice. Andrews similarly had his own entourage, though Cui only appeared in court remotely due to an undisclosed illness.
After court adjourned, Burke and his attorneys did not offer comment to press assembled in the lobby of Chicago's Dirksen Federal Courthouse. He ignored a question from one reporter, asking if he had anything to say to the people of the city's 14th Ward which he represented for over five decades.
But in a statement released shortly after Burke left the courthouse, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson suggested the former city councilor had failed his "moral responsibility" to those 14th Ward constituents.
"Elected officials are responsible for serving with honesty and integrity, with a moral responsibility to their constituents to uphold and abide by the law," Johnson said. "In the case that they fail to do so, it is imperative that they are held accountable. That is what the jury decided today."
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was the last of eight Chicago mayors Burke worked under, also issued a statement condemning Burke for having "feasted" on "gluttonous power."
Burke was first elected to the City Council in 1969 and served continuously until this year, when he chose not to run for reelection. For three decades he also led Chicago's committee on finance, one of the most influential committees which had great sway over what issues were brought before the council as a whole.
Burke is also part of larger political system. Besides his wife's ties to the Illinois judicial system, his corruption charges echo the 23 bribery and racketeering counts which ex-Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan currently faces. Burke also worked closely with former Chicago city councilor and zoning committee chair Danny Solis, who became an FBI informant and secretly recorded conversations with Burke and Madigan in exchange for having his own corruption allegations tossed out.
Dozens of other Chicago alderman besides Burke and Solis have faced corruption charges since the 1970s; in February 2022, former city councilor Patrick Daley Thompson, the grandson and nephew of former Chicago mayors Richard J. Daley and Richard M. Daley respectively, was convicted of tax fraud.
Acting District Attorney Morris Pasqual held a short press conference in the courthouse lobby after Burke had left the building and said why so many corrupt politicians come out of Chicago is "the 64,000 dollar question."
"Alderman Burke obviously joins a long list of corrupt City Council alderman who have been convicted of corruption charges over here in federal court," Pasqual said. "All I can say is what I said before. We're determined to continue to investigate these cases, using any and all lawful tools at our disposal."
Asked if Burke's conviction would have any impact on how other members of city or state government behave, Pasqual said he could only hope so.
"This case has had massive publicity, and I'd like to think that public officials out there who are tempted to start down this path will be further on notice that the federal government is out there, the FBI is out there, the U.S. Attorney's Office is out there," Pasqual said.
Federal prosecutors first indicted Burke in 2019 over four episodes, or "buckets," as they were occasionally referred to in trial, that occurred 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, with Andrews' assistance, 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'd hire Burke's private law firm. They never actually did.
Prosecutors also accused Burke of taking bribes from 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.
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 the recordings of Burke's conversations that Solis secretly captured, including Burke's famous line asking if they had "landed the tuna."
That is, 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.
After 23 hours of deliberation, the jury found Burke guilty on 13 counts he faced in relation to these "buckets," dodging only a single extortion count related to his attempts to direct the Dhananis' tax work to Klafter & Burke. All of Andrews' counts related to the same Burger King issue, though jurors decided he really was the innocent punchclock aide which his attorneys portrayed him as during trial.
Presiding U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, a George W. Bush appointee, set Burke's sentencing date for June 19. Cui's sentencing hearing is set for June 17.
Attorneys for Cui and Andrews did not return requests for comment.
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