Embattled Ald. Edward Burke has spent more than $2.7 million on legal fees, tapping a deep reservoir of campaign funds built up over decades as he awaits trial on charges of racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion.
There is plenty more spending to come for the longest-serving alderman in Chicago history, as a federal judge has yet to set Burke’s trial date amid a flurry of pretrial motions filed by his attorneys. All the lawyering may be costing Burke a fortune, but it’s also helping delay what promises to be a high-profile public corruption case, even by Chicago standards.
By the time FBI agents raided Burke’s City Hall and 14th Ward offices in November 2018, Burke’s three campaign funds topped $12 million, records show. For decades, the Southwest Side stalwart mostly sat on the growing mountain of campaign cash, leading many City Hall observers to wonder just what the septuagenarian alderman, who has been in office since 1969, planned to do with the money.
If Burke had been holding onto the money for a rainy day, the storm rolled in when federal prosecutors officially charged him in January 2019. A 14-count indictment filed four months later accused the longtime political power broker of abusing his City Hall clout to extort private legal work from companies and individuals doing business with the city.
Burke, who is married to Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke, has spent heavily to mount a defense. Over the last two years, the alderman has spent an average of $109,000 per month on his legal team, state campaign finance records show.
He is bankrolling a legal team of former federal prosecutors, who have filed hundreds of pages of motions before U.S. District Judge Robert Dow, a rigorous effort that has left the judge wading through what he called an “unprecedented” stack of motions. As a result, Dow said during a September status hearing that the court was still months away from a pretrial hearing, let alone an actual trial date for Burke, who just turned 78.
However long the legal battle takes, records show Burke isn’t in danger of running out of money anytime soon. His three political funds — Friends of Edward M. Burke, the Burnham Committee and the 14th Ward Regular Democratic Organization — held a total of $10.75 million as of September, when the alderman filed his most recent quarterly campaign finance reports.
Burke did not respond to a request for comment.
While he was forced to resign his powerful post as chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, Burke won reelection in 2019 despite the FBI raids and federal charges. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, herself a former federal prosecutor, has repeatedly called on Burke to resign, saying the case against him is “strong.”
As he nears the end of his 52nd year in office, Burke has refused to step aside, insisting he is innocent.
The 59-page federal indictment against Burke outlined a series of alleged schemes, including a bid to get then-fellow Ald. Danny Solis to help him extort the company behind a massive $800 million renovation of the Old Post Office into hiring Burke’s law firm in exchange for help at City Hall. What Burke didn’t know is that Solis was wearing a wire, which eventually led to a wiretaps on Burke’s cellphone and City Hall phones.
“As far as I’m concerned, they can go f— themselves,” Burke allegedly said of the developers during a wiretapped conversation with Solis, who noted the project’s request for tax breaks soon would come before Burke’s Finance Committee.
“Well, good luck getting it on the agenda,” Burke allegedly replied.
Federal prosecutors also have accused Burke of trying to muscle developers of two smaller projects into hiring his law firm for property tax appeals and of threatening to oppose an admission fee increase at a Chicago museum if it did not respond to his inquiry about hiring the child of a friend. The Tribune reported Burke had tried to get the Field Museum to hire the daughter of former Ald. Terry Gabinski — a protege of the late U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski who took office as alderman the same day as Burke in 1969.
The FBI listened in as at least 9,475 wiretapped calls were made or received on Burke’s phone over a period of at least eight months, authorities have revealed. The indictment charged Burke with one count of racketeering, two counts of federal program bribery, two counts of attempted extortion, one county of conspiracy to commit extortion and eight counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Burke’s lawyers have said the charges are “unfounded and not based on actual evidence” and that they “welcome the opportunity to present the complete picture and all the facts to a jury.” Burke, they have said, “will be vindicated.”
In court, Burke’s lawyers have filed motions arguing the evidence collected from the wiretaps on Burke’s phones should be suppressed. They have accused prosecutors of directing Solis, who secretly cooperated with the investigation, to have “scripted interactions” with Burke and lie about the post office deal to curry favor with the government.
Burke’s team alleged that Solis had been recorded “committing a number of different crimes” and revealed that he entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the government on the same day Burke was first charged. Solis abruptly retired just days before erroneously unsealed court records showed he had been secretly recorded by a developer.
Burke’s attorneys have argued the wiretaps should be inadmissible at trial because prosecutors “recklessly and intentionally” withheld in the wiretap application they took to court that they had used a “desperate” alderman to try to catch Burke committing a crime. They say that despite Solis’ best efforts, Burke never agreed on tape to provide any official action in exchange for private business.
Burke’s private business helped him amass a personal fortune over decades as one of Chicago’s top attorneys handling property tax appeals for companies and individuals who often had business before the city. Among Burke’s onetime clients: former President Donald Trump.
The benefit of having City Hall’s largest campaign fund, however, is that Burke doesn’t have to use his personal wealth to pay his lawyers.
Burke has been represented by former U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Sklarsky, both of Jenner & Block. Through the end of September, Burke has paid the firm $1.6 million, records show.
Also on the defense team is Joseph Duffy, a former federal prosecutor and IRS agent from Loeb & Loeb, which has been paid $968,000 from Burke’s campaign fund.
In addition, Burke has spent another $156,000 with Blegen & Garvey, the firm representing Peter Andrews, a longtime 14th Ward aide who has pleaded not guilty to conspiring with Burke to shake down two business owners seeking to renovate a Burger King in the ward.
Records show Burke has essentially halted all campaign fundraising since collecting tens of thousands of dollars in donations from attendees at his annual Christmas fundraiser less than a week after federal agents first raided his offices in November 2018. His funds, however, still have accrued income from interest and investment returns, records show.
Most of the money in his largest campaign fund, Friends of Edward Burke, is held in investments — about $8.5 million as of the end of September. In the last two years, records show Burke has sold $2.1 million in investments to cover his legal expenses.
While Illinois law allows politicians to spend campaign money on legal expenses, Burke may have an incentive not to spend all of it.
When then-Gov. Jim Edgar signed a campaign finance reform package into law in 1998, Illinois banned the personal use of campaign funds by future politicians. But a grandfather clause in the legislation allowed sitting officeholders to still tap the contents of their political war chests at the time the legislation was signed for everything from mortgages to college tuition.
For Burke, that means there are no restrictions on how he can spend the $2.45 million he had in his campaign fund on June 30, 1998, the date set in the law Edgar signed.
While Burke continues his fight in court, he’s also facing a political battle at City Hall, as aldermen feud over the boundaries for the city’s new ward map. It’s a once-a-decade process set in motion by new census results that Burke used to hold great power over in backroom negotiations.
But the latest map proposed by the City Council’s Rules Committee would make Burke’s reelection prospects dicier, should he seek a record 14th full term in 2023.
The proposed map would push the western boundary of Burke’s ward east of Midway International Airport, cutting out white precincts in the bungalow belt of the Garfield Ridge neighborhood west of the airport where Burke drew strong support while holding on to the increasingly Hispanic ward in the past few elections.
Instead, the new 14th Ward would include more of heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, such as Chicago Lawn and Marquette Park. The new ward would be 84.6% Latino, according to a Rules Committee breakdown of the racial characteristics of the proposed map.
The redrawn ward comes after supporters of the competing Latino Caucus ward map derided an earlier Rules Committee proposal as the “Burke protection map,” because it increased his share of Garfield Ridge. Lightfoot let it be known she was not happy with 14th Ward boundaries that were so friendly to the election prospects of her City Council nemesis, and changes were made before Rules Committee chair Ald. Michelle Harris unveiled the proposal.
Burke already has been ousted as the 14th Ward committeeman by state Rep. Aaron Ortiz, an ally of U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García. Ortiz also defeated Burke’s brother, former state Rep. Dan Burke, for his statehouse seat.
A vestige of the old Democratic machine, the Burke family has lorded over the 14th Ward for 68 years. Burke took over the positions of committeeman and alderman after his father, Joseph P. Burke, died of lung cancer after serving 15 years as alderman.
The federal charges have the family’s political dynasty teetering on the edge of a final collapse, but Burke has shown little interest in discussing his case publicly.
That includes in April, when new filings in the case revealed the alderman had made an alleged antisemitic remark during a wiretapped conversation. According to prosecutors, Burke made the statement about Jewish lawyers while discussing development of the old main post office.
“Well, you know as well as I do, Jews are Jews and they’ll deal with Jews to the exclusion of everybody else unless … unless there’s a reason for them to use a Christian,” Burke allegedly said, referring to the owner of the development company heading up the massive Old Post Office project. The Midwest Anti-Defamation League denounced the statement as deeply concerning.
Asked at City Hall about the alleged remarks, Burke replied, “We’ll respond in court.”
Chicago Tribune’s Ray Long contributed.
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