An FBI mole at the 2016 Democratic National Convention: The origin story of the Ald. Edward Burke corruption probe

CHICAGO -- A who’s who of Illinois Democrats was gathered in Philadelphia in July 2016 for the party’s national convention, where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were vying for the chance to take on Donald Trump.

Among the Chicago heavyweights in attendance that week was Ald. Daniel Solis, a staunch Clinton supporter who told the Tribune the excitement of potentially having the first woman in U.S. history ever to be nominated for president was “a historical moment in the life of this country and in my life.”

As it turned out, Clinton’s nomination wasn’t the only history going down in the City of Brotherly Love. Behind the scenes, one of the most significant public corruption cases in Chicago history was about to be born.

Two months before the event, Solis had quietly agreed to cooperate with federal investigators after being confronted with evidence he’d used his elected position for personal gain. By the time the convention began on July 25, he was outfitted with an audio recorder, a first step in what became an unprecedented turn as an FBI mole.

The main target at that time could not have been bigger: then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, the head of the Illinois Democratic Party on his way to becoming the longest-serving state legislative leader in the country.

But with a political player like Solis cooperating, the net was cast far and wide, and Chicago Ald. Edward Burke allegedly fell right into it.

While at the convention, Burke, the then-dean of the City Council and powerful head of the Finance Committee, approached Solis and started pushing for clout-heavy demolition company Heneghan Wrecking for consideration in the massive $800 million renovation of the old main post office in Solis’ 14th Ward, court records show.

The conversation was unsolicited and not part of Solis’ cooperation. But Solis discussed the interaction with his federal handlers, who instructed him to engage Burke further on the post office project and record what he had to say.

Over the next several months, the Burke investigation rapidly expanded as Solis recorded his colleague on both audio and video, on the phone and in person, allegedly talking about an array of corrupt endeavors, including pressuring the post office site’s New York-based developer, Harry Skydell, into hiring Burke’s private law firm to do property tax appeals, according to prosecutors.

Those recordings — including Burke’s now-infamous quip comparing getting Skydell’s business to landing “the tuna” — form a key pillar of the government’s evidence against Burke at his racketeering trial, which starts Monday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

Less clear is what jurors will hear about how Burke came in the crosshairs of federal investigators in the first place.

Prosecutors opted not to call Solis and will instead introduce the recordings through other witnesses, while the jury will be instructed that nothing Solis says on the tapes is to be weighed for its truth.

Burke’s lawyers, however, made the surprise announcement last month that they intend to call Solis as their own witness, even though they have ruled out pursuing an entrapment defense.

If Solis does take the stand, Burke’s legal team will get the chance to grill him about his own actions in the case, including the discussion with Burke in Philadelphia and subsequent meetings where the defense claims Solis parroted “scripts” fed to him by the feds in an effort to keep Burke on the hook.

Burke, 79, was originally charged in a criminal complaint in January 2019, weeks after the FBI raided his City Hall office suite. 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 old main 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 business owners 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. The trial is expected to last up to six weeks.

Madigan, 81, was indicted on separate racketeering charges in March 2022 based in part on recordings made by Solis. He’s scheduled to go to trial in April.

The U.S. attorney’s office held out disclosing whether Solis would be called as a government witness in the Burke case until mid-September under a deadline imposed by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall.

The strategy has not been explained, but subjecting the 72-year-old Solis to a grueling cross examination by Burke’s top-tier legal team was surely a factor. Others believe prosecutors are trying to keep their cards close to the vest with Madigan’s trial looming next year.

While defense attorneys ruled out the prospect of an entrapment argument, they instead confirmed their intent to call Solis as their own witness and put his deal “squarely on the table.”

The move could backfire. Solis, a seasoned politician, will certainly be well-coached by prosecutors and could come across as likable to the jury instead of being a question mark in the back of jurors’ minds if he didn’t appear in the trial.

There’s also a possibility that Burke’s lawyers are bluffing, something prosecutors acknowledged at a recent pretrial hearing.

“It may be that when it gets to the end of the government’s case and the defense case is beginning that Mr. Burke decides not to call Danny Solis,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur told the judge. “And then what happens if all this information has been front-loaded by the defense to no purpose other than to dirty up Solis without having it tied up in any way with their case in chief?”

Kendall warned Burke’s legal team they “certainly would not be in good standing” if they said “all kinds of things about Solis” in their opening statement to the jury then didn’t call him.

Burke attorney Joseph Duffy said their opening remarks to the jury would be confined only to what Solis was expected to say on the stand, and that going through Solis’ entire history “would consume an opening statement.”

“I can’t imaging any opening statement would get into a litany of the history of Danny Solis’ bad acts and motivations for cooperating,” he said.

If Solis does get called to the witness stand, it will mark a dramatic moment that has been more than four years in the making.

Solis announced his abrupt retirement in late 2018, shortly before the FBI raid on Burke’s offices. But it wasn’t until a bombshell court filing was made public several months later that the lid was blown on Solis’ cooperation.

The document showed the FBI had spent more than two years investigating Solis before he was confronted and flipped in May 2016, secretly listening in on thousands of phone calls as the alderman solicited everything from campaign donations to sexual services at a massage parlor.

The deferred prosecution deal offered to Solis in exchange for going undercover was unprecedented in Chicago, particularly for an elected official who was allegedly caught on the take.

As part of the deal, Solis was charged with a single count of corruptly soliciting campaign donations from a real estate developer in exchange for zoning changes in 2015. But instead of pleading guilty and hoping for an eventual break in his sentence, Solis was assured the charge will be dropped in three years if he continues to cooperate. Not only will he have a clean criminal record, Solis would also get to keep his nearly $100,000-a-year city pension.

The deal was signed by Solis on the day after Christmas 2018 and kept secret for nearly 3½ years before the U.S. attorney’s office finally put it on the record last year.

After an outcry from some at City Hall, the federal prosecutor leading the Burke and Madigan investigations delivered an impassioned defense of the deal with Solis, telling the federal judge overseeing the high-profile case that Solis’ cooperation was perhaps “singular” even in the city’s long history of political corruption.

“Some may view (Solis’ deal) as being with little precedent, but what Mr. Solis did also was with little precedent,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said. “He didn’t just talk. He took action. He worked with the federal government for six years to expose corruption.”

Some of the lines allegedly uttered by Burke on the Solis recordings have already become a part of the Chicago corruption lexicon, such as when he asked his colleague about the old main post office developer in May 2017, “So, did we land the, uh, the tuna?”

Jurors will hear Burke in his own words as he complained bitterly about Skydell slow-walking his request to hire Klafter & Burke, repeatedly telling Solis that he wasn’t going to help them with issues that required City Hall action unless they played ball.

“If we’re not signed up, I’m not going to do any heavy lifting for these guys,” Burke was quoted as saying to Solis during a Jan. 25, 2017, meeting in his office. “So far, we have no — the cash register has not rung yet.”

Nearly 10 months later, Burke was even more pointed. After a meeting about the post office project in Solis’ office on Oct. 15, 2017, Burke told Solis in a private moment: “Well, I’m not very fond of the way they’ve conducted themselves up until this point, and as far as I’m concerned, they can go (expletive) themselves.”

Solis told Burke he’d reminded Skydell that some of the issues they needed addressed would be going before Burke’s Finance Committee.

“Well, good luck gettin’ it on the agenda,” Burke allegedly shot back.

Despite Burke’s long-cultivated reputation for savviness, there was little subtlety about his overtures in some of the wiretaps and meetings that Solis recorded, according to the evidence prosecutors are expected to present.

Solis captured Burke in meetings with developers blatantly pulling from his briefcase life-size reprints of a Sun-Times front page describing his success reducing taxes for Trump Tower, then passing it around with his law firm business card.

Jurors will hear Burke talk openly with Solis about getting developers other than Skydell to hire his firm, and even offered Solis a marketing “consulting” arrangement where he’d be paid under the table for helping bring business to Klafter & Burke, according to prosecutors.

Among them is a recording from 2016 when Burke and Solis allegedly discussed another developer, identified only as Individual G-1. Burke told Solis on the recording that his firm had done one job for Individual G-1 and “really hit it out of the park,” and that he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t given him more work, according to court records.

“Let me talk to him,” Solis allegedly responded.

“If you can tee him up, then you can be our consultant,” Burke told Solis, according to a transcript of the call in court records.

Before Burke left the office, he told Solis to bring him any other developers who might be in need of his assistance. “There are a lot of developers,” Solis allegedly responded. “They all, ah, they all need somebody that does what I do,” Burke replied.

Prosecutors also will play tapes where Burke allegedly made comments to Solis about Skydell’s Jewish heritage possibly hindering their business relationship. Referring to difficulties he was having getting the developer’s support, Burke allegedly told Solis, “Yeah, but part of it could be that, that black hat. They only want to deal with Jews,” according to court records.

“You really think so?” Solis asked.

“They’re orthodox Jews,” Burke allegedly responded.

In another conversation, Burke allegedly told Solis, “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.

Burke’s lawyers had argued the potentially inflammatory comments be barred from the trial, particularly given the Hamas attacks on Israel in October and ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

Kendall, however, ruled that they were highly probative of the allegations that Burke was “leveraging official action” to try and win Skydell’s business. She also noted there had been a rise in antisemitic incidents as well since the Hamas attack. “Now, as ever, prejudices may cut in any direction,” Kendall said.

Meanwhile, the very first recorded call made by Solis of Burke that has been mentioned in federal court papers came on Aug. 26, 2016, exactly a month after Burke had approached Solis at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

“I just wanted to find out from you whether you’re still interested in me, you know, bringing up Heneghan (Wrecking),” Solis said on the call, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit filed in 2018.

Burke mentioned that Heneghan was just finishing up the demolition of Oprah Winfrey’s old Harpo Studios facility in the West Loop so they’d be looking for work. Solis said he’d put in a good word for Heneghan at his next meeting with Skydell.

“Well, while you’re at it, recommend the good firm of Klafter & Burke to do the tax work,” Burke replied. “And then we can certainly talk about a marketing arrangement for you.”