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Longtime Chicago Ald. Edward Burke pleaded not guilty Tuesday to sweeping corruption charges alleging he abused his City Hall clout to extort work for his law firm and other favors from companies and individuals doing business with the city.
A short time later, Mayor Lori Lightfoot renewed her call for Burke to resign his office, saying, “I don’t know how he can properly function with integrity.”
Lightfoot told reporters she had not heard from Burke — and didn’t expect to — since calling for him to step down after his indictment last week.
“Obviously, he needs to focus on what’s happening to him in the federal criminal courts, but all the more reason why it’s appropriate for him to step aside,” she said.
The routine hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole marked the first time Burke entered a plea in court since he was first charged with a single count of attempted extortion in January.
The 19-count indictment that charges Burke and two others with wrongdoing starts the legal clock ticking toward a potential trial. Burke himself was indicted on 14 counts — one count of racketeering, two counts of federal program bribery, two counts of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion and eight counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity. The most serious charges call for up to 20 years in federal prison upon conviction.
Burke, 75, spent only about half an hour at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Tuesday.
Dressed in a dark suit and green striped tie, Burke arrived in an SUV as a soft rain fell and strode into the courthouse past a wall of television news cameras and reporters.
Before the hearing began, Burke sat in the front row of the gallery in the packed 17th-floor courtroom, his legs crossed and tapping his hand on a knee. He didn’t utter a word during the brief arraignment as his lawyers entered his not-guilty plea on his behalf.
Moments later, Burke walked out of the courthouse without comment and was escorted by building security to a waiting vehicle.
The next status hearing was set for July 2 before U.S. District Judge Robert Dow, who will preside over Burke’s trial.
[ Read the indictment of Chicago Ald. Edward Burke ]
Also charged for the first time was Peter J. Andrews, a longtime political operative in Burke’s 14th Ward office who is accused of assisting the alderman in attempting to shake down two businessmen seeking to renovate a Burger King restaurant in the ward. Andrews, 69, also pleaded not guilty Tuesday.
The indictment also names Charles Cui, who was first charged in April on allegations he hired 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. He, too, pleaded not guilty.
All three defendants remain free on bond.
The 59-page indictment outlined a series of schemes in which Burke — the city’s longest-serving alderman and a vestige of the old Democratic machine — allegedly tried to muscle developers into hiring his law firm, Klafter & Burke, to appeal their property taxes. Among the projects Burke allegedly tried to capitalize on was the massive, $800 million renovation of the old main Chicago post office in the West Loop, according to the charges.
A key part of the evidence against Burke on that project comes from secret recordings made by then-Ald. Daniel Solis, a longtime Burke ally who began working undercover with federal investigators in 2016 after he was himself secretly recorded by a developer. The indictment revealed for the first time a few short excerpts from some of those undercover recordings.
In one conversation included in the indictment, Burke allegedly told Solis he wasn’t going to help the chief developer on the post office project, New York-based Harry Skydell’s 601W Cos., until Skydell agreed to hire Burke’s firm for tax work.
“The cash register has not rung yet,” Burke allegedly told Solis in the January 2017 conversation.
Four months later, Burke was again recorded asking Solis about the developers. “So did we land the, uh, the tuna?” he said to Solis in May 2017, according to the indictment. He also lamented that the post office developers would “only work with Jewish lawyers” to appeal their property taxes unless he could offer special assistance, the indictment alleges.
That October, Solis recorded a meeting at City Hall when Burke allegedly expressed his displeasure over the way the developers continued to stonewall him.
“As far as I’m concerned, they can go f--- themselves,” Burke told Solis, according to the indictment. When Solis noted the developers would soon be before Burke’s Finance Committee requesting $100 million in tax increment financing for the massive project, Burke responded, “Well, good luck getting it on the agenda,” the indictment alleges.
The charges also allege that Burke threatened to oppose an increase in the admission fee for a Chicago museum after the museum failed to respond to the alderman’s inquiry about an internship there for a child of a friend. The indictment does not name the museum, but details included in the charges make clear it was the Field Museum.
Sources confirmed that the friend was former Ald. Terry Gabinski — a protege of the late U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski who was sworn in as alderman on the same day in 1969 as Burke.
Burke’s lawyers left the courthouse Tuesday without comment, but in an emailed statement after the indictment last week, the defense said that “any suggestion” that Burke abused his office “for personal gain is simply not true.”
Chicago Tribune Sports
“The charges are unfounded and not based on actual evidence,” the statement said. “We welcome the opportunity to present the complete picture and all the facts to a jury. We are confident that when that happens, Ed Burke will be vindicated.”
[ Column: Mayor Lightfoot’s (buttocks) kicking of Ald. Edward Burke was simply Homeric ]
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