Whether a job can be considered “property” and what constitutes an “official act” were the focus of court arguments Wednesday in ex-Chicago Ald. Edward Burke’s corruption case, where Burke’s attorneys made a long-shot bid for a retrial on some counts and an outright acquittal on others.
Burke, 80, was convicted by a jury in December of racketeering conspiracy and a dozen other counts for using the clout of his elected office to try to win private law business from developers and pressure the Field Museum to hire his goddaughter.
Burke is scheduled to be sentenced June 24. Before that, however, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall must deal with a motion by Burke’s attorneys to toss out portions of the jury’s decision and acquit the former alderman on nine counts.
Such motions are routine and rarely granted, but are a necessary legal step to an eventual appeal to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In his argument Wednesday, however, Burke attorney Chris Gair told Kendall this is “not a run-of-the-mill, throw everything up at the wall and see what sticks” motion.
Gair said they “have been very focused and precise” on instances where “no reasonable jury” could have found Burke guilty given the evidence and legal instructions.
In count after count, Gair said, prosecutors failed to show that Burke took any official action in exchange for anything of value, whether it was reading the Field Museum the riot act for dropping the ball on his goddaughter’s application, intervening in a pole sign application for a developer’s project on the Northwest Side, or pressuring Amtrak and Water Department officials in order to help the developer of the Old Post Office.
Gair agreed that the defense has a high burden to show the jury reached the wrong legal conclusion, but said the evidence is undisputed.
“If all the witnesses say ‘There was no pressure,’ the jury is not entitled to find there was pressure,” Gair said. “It’s that simple.”
Prosecutors, however, said the defense was essentially rehashing arguments it made to the jury last year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker told the judge: “This is not time for a closing argument.”
“The defendant made his case to the jury, had a fair trial, and the jury didn’t accept it,” Streicker said, adding that the trial featured “nothing even close to errors that jeopardize Mr. Burke’s rights.”
Much of the arguments in the nearly three-hour hearing did seem to rehash what was heard at trial.
Though Burke was not required to attend the proceedings, he chose to do so, entering the courtroom dressed in a dark gray suit and bright green pocket square and taking a seat at the defense table, where he sat with his head propped up by a fist and scribbling on a legal pad.
Burke’s wife, former Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke, also attended, sitting behind Burke in the front row of the gallery. After the proceedings concluded, Burke donned a tan fedora and the couple walked out of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without comment.
In addition to the pole sign and Field Museum episodes, Burke was convicted of extorting the owners of a Burger King and using his significant City Hall power to try to get law business from the New York-based developers tackling the $600 million renovation of the Old Post Office. He was acquitted on one count of conspiracy to commit extortion related to the Burger King project.
The nearly clean sweep of guilty verdicts capped a stunning fall for Burke, the former head of the city Finance Committee and a Democratic political machine master who served a record 54 years in the City Council before stepping down months before his trial.
Most post-trial proceedings are handled on paper, but Burke’s attorneys asked for in-person arguments due to the complex legal questions, and the judge agreed, writing in a recent order “this is precisely the situation where oral argument may be helpful to the court due to the voluminous filings.”
Kendall thanked both sides for their arguments Wednesday and said she’d rule on the motion shortly.
In his argument, Gair characterized the Field Museum episode as little more than Burke blowing his stack when he found out that the museum had failed to follow up on the application by his goddaughter, who is the daughter of one of Burke’s longtime friends, former Ald. Terry Gabinski.
When a museum official called Burke to ask for his support for their upcoming fee increase proposal, Burke read her the riot act and suggested he had the power to make sure it went nowhere. But Gair said it was far from extortion.
“One thing we know for sure: Ed Burke made a threat,” Gair said. “It was an empty threat. … What really happened there was he blew up in anger over being disrespected and he said something that was profoundly obnoxious.”
Gair also argued that under the law, the extortion has to be for property, and the Field Museum internship doesn’t qualify. “The possibility of a job is not property,” he said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sushma Raju said jurors were clearly instructed that the “property” in question was not the interview itself, but the money and other compensation connected to the job in question.
The position was “very competitive,” Raju said, but museum officials went out of their way to offer Gabinski an interview — and jurors could reasonably infer that the interview was the first step toward offering her the job.
“They can also infer that had she gone for that interview they would have offered her the job,” Raju said.
In their motion for an acquittal, the defense also noted Kendall’s own assessment of the Field Museum allegations at trial, which she called “an extremely odd attempted extortion count.”
“The court’s skepticism was well founded,” the defense filing stated. “The Hobbs Act requires an attempt to extort ‘property,’ but there was no property here, only a potential job interview with the museum, and one which was never requested by Mr. Burke.”
Burke is also arguing for an acquittal on each count related to the solicitation of legal business from Charles Cui, a developer who enlisted Burke’s help in getting the pole sign permit for a Binny’s Beverage Depot at his development in Portage Park.
The defense argued that Burke’s involvement was limited to placing two phone calls about the sign to other public officials, both of whom “explicitly denied being pressured by Burke to take official action.”
“In both cases, he simply asked for someone to look at the situation, which does not amount to official action,” the motion for acquittal stated.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman, however, said that argument falls woefully short. For one, the sign had already been through the application process and was rejected, so Burke was asking other city officials to reverse that decision. Also, Chapman said, the project was wasn’t even close to Burke’s Southwest Side ward.
“It was anything but typical. In fact, it was wildly atypical,” Chapman said.
Gair sounded a similar theme when it came to the Post Office counts, arguing that Burke’s outreach to Amtrak and current and former Water Department officials to help solve critical issues for New York-based developer Harry Skydell was a genuine effort to lend his assistance to an important project, not some Machiavellian effort to use his office for personal gain.
But it would be absurd, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said, to think Burke wasn’t leveraging his government position in his dealings with the developers.
“Mr. Burke cloaked himself in the power of a public official from the very first meeting,” she said, emphasizing that Burke held meetings in his City Hall offices, where guests would have had to walk past glass etched with “Committee on Finance.”
“Mr. Burke was shrouding himself with the position he held, the power that he had in the city of Chicago,” she said.
Burke’s attorneys also argued the former alderman is entitled to acquittal or at least a new trial on the main racketeering charge because prosecutors “failed to prove that Mr. Burke conducted or participated in a pattern of racketeering activity” involving two or more acts.
In response, prosecutors said the evidence against Burke was overwhelming and showed he routinely abused his powerful position to target people who needed something from the city.
“When Burke did not get what he wanted, he attempted to extort entities by referencing or raising the specter of adverse action in order to get private business for his law firm or a personal benefit for a close friend,” prosecutors wrote. “As reflected in the jury’s guilty verdict on the racketeering charge, Burke’s efforts to abuse his office were not isolated episodes but rather a pervasive pattern of corrupt activity.”
Burke’s high-profile, six-week trial featured some 38 witnesses and more than 100 secretly recorded videos and wiretapped recordings, offering a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of Chicago’s top political power brokers at work.
At the heart of the case were dozens of wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded meetings made by Daniel Solis, the former 25th Ward alderman who turned FBI mole after being confronted in 2016 with his own wrongdoing.
In closing arguments, prosecutors put up on large video screens a series of now-notorious statements made by Burke on the recordings. Among them: “The cash register has not rung yet,” “They can go (expletive) themselves,” and “Did we land the tuna?”
Also convicted was Cui, whose sentencing is set for next month.
Meanwhile, the jury acquitted Burke’s longtime 14th Ward aide, Peter Andrews, of all counts alleging he helped Burke pressure the Burger King owners into hiring Burke’s law firm by shutting down their restaurant renovation.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
mcreapeau@chicagotribune.com
