Former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke is finally getting his day in court.
The son of a Democratic ward boss and 14th Ward alderman, the younger Burke grew up in a home steeped in Chicago’s particular street-level realpolitik: Smooth over potholes, fix up friends with patronage jobs, and make sure everyone who benefited knew how to vote — and for whom to vote.
Along the way, he’d earn infamy in the 1980s for trying to thwart every move of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, during “Council Wars,” pave the way for his wife to become chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, run the council’s Finance Committee like his own personal fiefdom and oversee an eponymous law firm that constantly put him into ethically questionable positions.
While Burke stood out among his aldermanic colleagues during his 54 years on the council, he now stands alongside dozens of them as another former alderman facing a federal public corruption trial. The Chicago machine he grew up with and worked to his advantage has atrophied.
Burke 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. The trial is expected to last about six weeks.
At the heart of the indictment are more than 100 secretly recorded meetings and phone calls prosecutors plan to play. As evidence is introduced, it will be shared below throughout the trial. Check back daily for the latest. Read the latest reporting on the trial here.
On Oct. 24, 2017, ex-Ald. Edward Burke called his longtime aide Peter Andrews Jr. to say he’d just driven by the Burger King and it appeared work was still being done.
Burke asked Andrews what the issue was that was supposed to block the work: “Why was I able to hold it up? What did they need from me?”
“They needed ... driveway permits and everything signed off on,” Andrews said.
“Well,” Burke said, “I don’t remember signing off on any driveway permits.”
About 90 minutes after that call, Andrews ordered the project shut down, according to testimony.
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The son of a Texas-based fast-food restaurant tycoon told a federal jury Tuesday he was “taken aback” when then-Ald. Ed Burke seemed to draw a direct link between helping with permit issues for their Southwest Side Burger King renovation and hiring Burke’s private law firm to do property tax appeals.
Dhanani was asked Tuesday about a phone call he had with Burke on June 27, 2017, two weeks after he and his father met with Burke at the Burger King site on South Pulaski Road, where they talked about a driveway permit as well as complaints about trucks parking overnight in the lot.
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Prosecutors played a wiretapped phone call between Zohaib Dhanani and Burke in advance of their first meeting to tour the Burger King site in June 2017.
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Recordings played so far in the case seem to reinforce the old school, cynical view of Chicago as a city that works — as long as powerful politician can get a piece of the action.
In wrapping up their evidence on the Post Office episode Friday, prosecutors played a final wiretapped recording made by Solis on Nov. 9, 2018, just 20 days before the FBI raid that thrust the investigation into the public spotlight.
As instructed by his FBI handlers, Solis told Burke during the in-person meeting that he was planning to retire midway through his next four-year term, and “go off into the sunset.” He also told Burke he had a line in on some big-time developers who were planning on a development near South Clark Street in Solis’ 25th Ward and would steer them to Klafter & Burke for a consulting fee.
“He says that’s gonna go, that would go really quick. And so I’m thinking within the next few months, or whatever, maybe he’s somebody else I can bring you and we can talk about a consulting situation for me,” Solis said on the recording played in court.
“Sure. As long as you remember me, yeah,” Burke responded. “We come from the old school.”
Jurors in ex-Ald. Ed Burke’s federal corruption trial on Thursday finally heard, in Burke’s own voice, a phrase already infamous in Chicago political history:
“So did we land the, uh, the tuna?”
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601W owner Harry Skydell and his son, Joseph, as well as a lawyer representing the Old Post Office project, came in to pitch a proposal for nearly $20 million in tax increment financing they wanted from the city to fund the reconstruction of the post office site’s west plaza.
The meeting was in then-Ald. Daniel Solis’ office and was recorded from a stationary camera that appeared to be hidden somewhere on table. Burke arrived 15 minutes after the meeting started, dressed in a gray suit, and shook hands with everyone before sitting down out of the camera’s view.
After the pitch and some pleasantries, Skydell and his team left, leaving Burke and Solis alone in the office. After Solis brought up how the development team had promised to be more responsive to their requests, Burke’s mood suddenly grew prickly. He told Solis he felt they could “go (expletive) themselves”
“I told them that this will go up to your committee,” Solis said.
Burke shot back, “Good luck getting it on the agenda,” and Solis laughed.
Burke reminded Solis during the Jan. 18, 2018, meeting that he was the one who decided what went on the Finance Committee agenda. He also asked, “How long have we been talking to this guy?”
“For a long time,” Solis said.
“And has anything happened?” Burke asked as Solis’ camera remained trained on Burke’s monogrammed “EMB” coffee mug on the desk. “This has been going on for six months, seven months.”
Solis said they had repeatedly insisted that hiring Burke’s firm would soon be “a done deal.”
“And if, ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas,” Burke quipped.
Powerful Chicago Ald. Ed Burke had just finished pitching his private law firm to the developers of the Old Post Office in October 2016 when he asked his assistant to bring in some pamphlets and business cards.
Unbeknownst to Burke, his colleague, then-Ald. Daniel Solis had a hidden video camera pointing right at him as Burke wrote something down on the back of the Klafter & Burke materials and slid it over Harry Skydell and his son, who had flown in from New York to meet Burke face to face.
“Between Danny and I there aren’t many people around town we don’t know,” Burke said on the recording, which was played for jurors Wednesday at Burke’s corruption trial. Skydell thanked Burke and remarked about his connections, saying, “I’d be surprised if you don’t know somebody here. If you don’t know somebody, he’s a nobody.”
The video of the Oct. 27, 2016, meeting in Solis’ City Hall office is one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in the sprawling racketeering indictment against Burke, which accuses the longtime Finance Committee chairman of using the powers of his elected office to pressure Skydell and other developers into hiring his law firm to do property tax appeals.
The Old Post Office developers have other properties in Chicago too, Burke went on to note, but they were using a different law firm for their tax work.
“You know as well as I do, Jews are Jews, and they’ll deal with Jews to the exclusion of everybody else,” Burke said in a matter-of-fact tone, looking unwittingly right into Solis’ camera in the below video. “Unless — unless there’s a reason for them to use a Christian.”
That recording was followed by others Wednesday that showed Burke over and over tying the hiring of Burke’s law firm by Skydell’s company, 601W, to any official action he might take on their behalf, be it helping with Amtrak or another issue that arose with the city Water Department.
“You know, if we’re not signed up, I’m not going to do any lifting for this guy,” Burke said with a shrug on one video recorded by Solis in January 2017. “I haven’t heard a word.”
When Solis reiterated the developers would need help with “a lot of other stuff,” Burke was caught on camera offering a half-smirk.
“So far we got no — the cash register has not, uh, rung yet,” he said.
Chicago Ald. Daniel Solis was a newly minted FBI mole in August 2016 when he was instructed to call his then-powerful colleague, Ald. Ed Burke, and talk about the massive $600 million renovation of the Old Post Office.
After some seemingly innocuous conversation about the project’s New York-based developers and local contractors who’d be vying for work, Burke made an unsolicited comment that surely perked up the ears of the FBI agents listening in the wire room.
“Well, while you’re at it, recommend the good firm of Klafter & Burke to do the tax work,” Burke told Solis on the Aug. 26, 2016, recording, which was played for the jury in Burke’s corruption trial Tuesday.
Listen to the audio:
As part of the investigation, Solis recorded dozens of conversations with Burke over the phone and secretly videotaped meetings in Burke’s City Hall offices with a camera hidden on his clothing.
In one of those meetings, from Sept. 26, 2016, Burke could be seen sitting behind his large desk dressed in his usual pinstriped suit, blue tie and American flag lapel pin, as Solis told him about a meeting he’d had with the lead Old Post Office developer, Harry Skydell, and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The video, which was also played for the jury Tuesday, appeared to be taken with a camera hidden somewhere on Solis’ chest, with the image shaky and Burke’s face coming in and out of the picture. On the video, Solis told Burke, he felt he and Skydell “got to the understanding that they work through me” on any issues going forward.
The owner of a Burger King in then-Ald. Edward Burke’s Southwest Side ward told a federal jury he agreed to hire the powerful Democrat’s property tax law firm to get the alderman to lift roadblocks to remodeling his restaurant and also sent a political donation to support Burke’s candidate for mayor.
The long-awaited testimony of Shoukat Dhahani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, struck at the heart of the corruption allegations against Burke, who is accused of using his official position to extract private legal business from developers.
Through Dhanani’s account, as well as in emails and wiretapped calls, prosecutors painted a picture of Burke actively on the prowl.
Then-Ald. Edward Burke seen in a surveillance photo meeting with the CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)
On June 8, 2017, Burke called an aide and asked her to check who was doing real estate tax work on behalf of Dhanani Group.
“I want somebody at the law office to check to see who’s filed with the assessor of the board on that one,” Burke said on the call, which was played in court Tuesday.
Three days later, Burke talked to political friend Rodney Ellis, a county commissioner in Texas, about Dhanani. “I’ll let him know how important you are,” Ellis told Burke on the call.
“Well, you’re good to do that, but I’d also like to get some of his law business,” Burke responded. “I hear he’s got 300 Burger Kings here.”
Listen to the audio:
On Aug. 2, 2017, almost two months after the meeting with Dhanani, Burke asked Andrews in a recorded call, “Have we heard any more from those Burger King people on Pulaski?”
“No, not a word,” Andrews replied.
Two months after that, Burke called Andrews to tell him he just drove past the Burger King and “there appears to be remodeling work going on there.”
Listen to the audio:
A telephone conversation between Edward Burke and Shoukat Dhanani on Jan. 18, 2018 recorded them discussing campaign contributions.
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Deborah Bekken, a onetime Field Museum director, was calling powerful Chicago Ald. Edward Burke to ask for his support for the museum’s proposal for a fee increase in September 2017 when he caught her off guard with an immediately chilly demeanor.
“Well, uh, I was surprised to hear from you —to be very frank,” a gruff-sounding Burke said to Bekken on the Sept. 8, 2017, call, which was secretly being recorded by the FBI. Burke grew more icy as he explained that he’d recommended a good friend’s daughter for an internship at the Field Museum but never heard back.
“I was quite disappointed and surprised that I never heard another word after my initial request,” the alderman said on the call, which was played for the jury at his corruption trial Monday. “So now, you’re going to make a request of me?”
That tense exchange forms the backbone of allegations in the Burke indictment that the then-powerful alderman threatened to block the Field Museum’s fee increase request because it had dropped the ball on the internship recommendation, which was for the daughter of Burke’s longtime friend, former Ald. Terry Gabinski, 32nd.
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Wthin minutes of Burke’s scolding of Bekken, her former boss, retired Field Museum President Richard Lariviere, called the alderman with hat in hand.
“I’m calling, first of all to apologize, because I understand that we dropped the ball on a request from you,” Lariviere said on the recording, which was played in court Monday afternoon.
“Uh, you sure did,” Burke shot back. “And I’m sure it’s not you, but, uh, I consider you a personal friend and I was very disappointed and uh, embarrassed that I would never get a call back.”
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The following 163-page document is the FBI’s affidavit for a search warrant tied in the investigation of Burke. The document contains transcriptions of conversations Burke had regarding some of the entities that figure into the indictment, including the redevelopment of the Old Post Office.
Portions of the document were redacted by officials.
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Originally Published: Nov 16, 2023 at 12:30 pm