CHICAGO (CN) — The monthlong corruption trial of ex-Chicago alderman Ed Burke saw its most dramatic day yet on Tuesday, beginning with federal prosecutors resting their case and culminating in Burke's defense attorneys doing likewise. Burke's defense team rested their case after just three hours of testimony by a single witness — ex-alderman, erstwhile Burke ally, former city zoning committee chair and once-FBI informant, Danny Solis.
The trial day started with a morning entirely dedicated to hashing out over 360 pages of proposed jury instructions. Before those discussions could be settled, the jury arrived to hear testimony around 1 p.m. Federal prosecutors rested their case against Burke and his co-defendants Peter Andrews and Charles Cui barely a half hour later, concluding with boilerplate questions about Chicago ethics standards for FBI Special Agent Jennifer Avila.
Solis, once a progressive activist and at another point one of the most influential men in city hall, spent the next three hours on the stand discussing his role as an FBI informant. He arrived amid a flurry of media and court-watcher attention, delivering his testimony to a courtroom more packed than on any day since trial began. Among the overflowing trial attendees was former Illinois Supreme Court justice — and Ed Burke's wife — Anne Burke, as well as former Chicago alderman Proco Joe Moreno.
A 2019 expose by the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Solis, in an attempt to get out from under his own corruption allegations — including asking a friendly political consultant named Roberto Caldero for Viagra and visits to massage parlors — had been working as a mole for the FBI's racketeering investigations into Ed Burke and ex-Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan since 2016.
In April 2022, the FBI publicly released its sweetheart deferred prosecution deal with Solis that stated he would only face a single felony bribery charge starting in 2015. On Tuesday, Solis told Burke's defense attorney Chris Gair that even this charge wouldn't stick, and that he no longer expects to be indicted for anything.
Gair, who has earned a reputation for theatricality over the course of the trial, used this information and other lines of questioning in an attempt to portray Solis as dishonest and opportunistic. The attorney questioned Solis near the start of his testimony on the covert recordings he made of conversations with Burke.
“Didn’t you do it so you could try and get Mr. Burke to say something, that you could help yourself with?” Gair asked.
“I’m not sure … I was trying to help myself by recording Ed Burke but I wasn’t trying to get him to say something specific,” Solis responded after a long pause.
Solis added that while recording conversations for the FBI between 2016 and 2017, he did lie to Burke and others, and tried to entice them to discuss certain topics, but maintained that he only ever did so on the feds' instruction.
The former alderman turned visibly indignant after Gair accused him of "fabricating" an illegal work offer for Burke in 2016. The bogus offer went that property development firm 601W Companies and its acquisitions director Harry Skydell would funnel legal work Burke's law firm Klafter & Burke in exchange for Burke's help streamlining renovations to Chicago's historic Old Post Office building, which 601W had bought that year.
“I didn’t make it up, I was working under the direction of the government,” Solis angrily told Gair.
The combative back-and-forth between Gair and Solis resulted in multiple sidebar sessions within just the first half-hour of the former alderman's testimony, and ultimately an admonishment from presiding U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall that Gair couldn't ask Solis questions for the sole purpose of trying to besmirch his character. Kendall also issued an order to that effect in October, before trial began.
“I just want to put a fine point on this … It’s well established that defense cannot call a witness for the sole purpose of impeaching him,” Kendall said, though she clarified that Gair could still toe the line of impeaching Solis when dealing with issues that brought his motives and bias into question.
After Kendall restated terms, a more congenial Gair continued to question Solis about his and Burke's involvement with the Old Post Office renovations for another two hours. Prosecutors accuse Burke — largely based on Solis' recordings of their conversations in 2016 — of trying to entice 601W to hire Klafter and Burke, now rebranded as KBC Law Group, for tax work. In one recording that jurors heard earlier in the trial, Burke even asked Solis if they had managed to "land the tuna" — that is, sign on 601W as a Klafter & Burke client.
Gair instead tried to turn Solis' recordings against themselves. He pointed out an instance in the 2016 conversation transcripts where Burke recommended bringing in then-Chicago Department of Water Management Commissioner Tom Powers to handle water supply issues at the Old Post Office.
In another conversation, Burke told Solis they should have Democratic Illinois Senator Dick Durbin exert his influence on Amtrak, whose rail lines run beneath the Old Post Office and whose presence was complicating renovation efforts.
“Mr. Burke did nothing but make a phone call to a knowledgeable guy to help the city?” Gair asked Solis regarding Burke's 2016 contact with Powers.
“To help the project and consequently help the city, correct,” Solis answered.
Gair concluded his questions — and Burke's case — by having Solis confirm that he would not see years, days or hours in jail for his own corruption allegations. Burke himself did not testify, and his co-defendants Peter Andrews and Charles Cui, respectively a former top aide in Burke's ward office and a local property owner who tried to get Burke's help securing permits for a liquor store pole sign, had no witnesses of their own to call.
As such, Kendall dismissed the jury early after instructing them to return Wednesday at 1 p.m., ready to hear closing arguments.
Closings are expected to last several days, after which jurors will begin deliberations. Their verdict will be among the politically impactful in recent Chicago history, and alongside the guilty verdicts recently issued in the bribery case of the "ComEd Four" and and the perjury case of former Mike Madigan Chief of Staff Tim Mapes, will serve as a prelude to Madigan's own racketeering trial next April.
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