A federal judge said Wednesday he’s still wading through nearly 700 pages of motions in the racketeering case against Chicago Ald. Edward Burke and that a hearing on any pretrial issues is still months away.

       At a brief telephone status hearing, U.S. District Judge Robert Dow said the motions filed over the past year by both sides were “of unprecedented volume,” in part because the judge expanded the usual page limits given the complexities of the case.

       “I hope you guys will make it worth my while,” Dow said.

       The judge said he plans to narrow down the issues and then set a hearing where both sides can argue their case. A date for that hearing was not set Wednesday, but Dow indicated the earliest it would take place is December.

       That means a trial for Burke, the city’s longest-serving alderman who’s been on the City Council since 1969, is likely still a long ways off. Burke’s current term ends in May 2023.

       Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, is at a City Council meeting at City Hall in Chicago on July 21, 2021. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

       Burke, 77, was originally charged in a criminal complaint in January 2019. He was indicted four months later on 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.

       The 59-page indictment outlined a series of schemes in which Burke allegedly tried to muscle developers into hiring his law firm, Klafter & Burke, to appeal their property taxes. Among the projects Burke tried to capitalize on was the massive $800 million renovation of the post office in the West Loop, according to the charges.

       Also charged was Burke’s longtime aide, Peter Andrews, who was accused of assisting the alderman in attempting to shake down two businessmen seeking to renovate a Burger King restaurant in the 14th Ward.

       The indictment also accused developer Charles Cui of hiring Burke’s law firm in exchange for the alderman’s help with a sign permit and financing deal for a project in the Portage Park neighborhood.

       All three have pleaded not guilty.

       Burke’s attorneys argued in a motion filed last year that evidence gleaned from the wiretaps on Burke’s cellphone and City Hall offices, which allowed the FBI to monitor thousands of conversations the alderman had over the course of nearly a year, should be suppressed.

       They accused prosecutors of directing then-Ald. Daniel Solis, who was secretly cooperating in the investigation, to have “scripted interactions” with Burke and lie about the post office deal to curry favor with the government. At the time, Solis himself had been recorded “committing a number of different crimes,” the motion stated.

       Burke’s attorneys also revealed that Solis entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the government on Jan. 3, 2019, the same day Burke was first charged. It was soon after Solis had abruptly announced his retirement and just days before court records were erroneously unsealed showing Solis had been secretly recorded by a developer.

       According to the filing, Solis admitted in the agreement to taking campaign cash from a real estate developer in exchange for official action at the Zoning Committee that Solis chaired.

       Burke’s attorneys want Dow to declare the wiretapped calls inadmissible at trial, saying that prosecutors “recklessly and intentionally” withheld in the Title III wiretap application that they had used a “desperate” alderman to try to catch Burke committing a crime.

       “The government did not disclose that it instructed a desperate (Solis) to record his conversations with Ald. Burke, even though (Solis) told the government that he had no knowledge of Ald. Burke ever having been involved in corrupt activity in the 25 years they served together on the City Council,” their motion stated.

       Burke’s lawyers alleged that despite Solis’ best efforts, Burke never agreed on tape to provide any official action in exchange for private business.

       But in a filing earlier this year, prosecutors dismissed that notion, saying that the undercover recordings and other evidence revealed at least 23 instances in which Burke talked with Solis about an illegal scheme to extort legal business related to the post office project.

       jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

       Judge still wading through ‘unprecedented’ stack of motions in federal case against Ald. Edward Burke

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