With ‘the tuna,’ Burger King and ‘the riot act,’ the trial of Chicago political icon Ed Burke is already finding its place in city lore
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The federal racketeering case against Ed Burke is pure Chicago.
At its core, the Burke trial, which just wrapped its third week, is about a series of alleged shakedowns by the longest-serving alderman in City Council history — a potential highlight reel for the sordid legacy of City Hall.
The former 14th Ward alderman is not accused of taking bribe money in an envelope, in a brown paper bag or slapped directly into an outstretched hand.
That cold cash approach may have been a little too ordinary for Burke, an old-school Democrat whose extraordinary clout is as much on trial as he is for the 14 charges he faces. It’s a case expected to stretch well past the fifth anniversary of the Nov. 29, 2018, FBI raid of the alderman’s City Hall offices.
Even Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman suggested in opening statements that Burke’s style was less greasy palm and a bit more “sophisticated.”
Burke himself may have inadvertently labeled the alleged take from his political style as “the tuna,” as in, “So did we land the, uh, the tuna?” A secret FBI recording caught that phrase in one the alleged shakedowns, and it is fast becoming part of Chicago’s political lexicon.
Sure, there was an extra step or two required in each of the four chapters that prosecutors have outlined to date in their book on Burke, but the allegations boil down to the most elemental Chicago corruption: Anybody who wanted something had to give something in return.
Over and over, Chapman charged, Burke sought “to line his own pockets with money” by making his public office a conduit to turn his private law firm into a cash register.
To no one’s surprise, Burke’s lawyers, Chris Gair and Joseph Duffy, have said there is no evidence that Burke ever demanded anything in exchange for taking official action — or made such threats to anybody. The Burke defense team portrayed a highly respected politician whose 54-year run on the City Council ended in May with a distinguished public record.
In court, Burke has eschewed the flashier pinstripe suits from his council days and opted for a more subdued and serious attire as a jury of nine women and three men prepares to determine his fate.
Though his pink ears sometimes turned reddish as prosecutors put on parts of their case, Burke occasionally slipped into a smile, such as when his lawyers described him as a man with a strong family, one highlighted in the courtroom’s front row by the matron of his clan: former Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke.
Undoubtedly benefiting from her husband’s former lead role in the Cook County Democratic Party’s judicial slating process, she became an accomplished jurist before retiring last year. But her judicial status has yet to be highlighted, perhaps a move designed to play up the family’s cohesion rather than its political connections.
But the jurors aren’t being asked to consider most of Burke’s five-decade aldermanic career. They won’t hear about the judge-making, the countless backroom deals, or the time Burke spent infamously trying to thwart the agenda of Mayor Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor, during the 1980s era of “Council Wars.”
In fact, many jurors live far outside of Chicago, and some have barely heard the name of the man whose guilt or innocence is in their hands.
Four chapters
In three of the four chapters alleged by prosecutors, Burke pulled levers at City Hall to help businessmen cut red tape, as long as his tax appeals law firm could get their business.
For example, the government said Burke went all out for developers working on the $600 million renovation of the Old Post Office in the West Loop and the owners of a Burger King in his Southwest Side ward once he sensed that getting their tax business could bring his law firm a financial windfall.
But Burke allegedly didn’t even have to ask for tax work when a desperate developer voluntarily sent him tax work while begging for help with getting a permit for a 30-foot-high sign for a Binny’s Beverage Depot on West Irving Park Road miles from Burke’s ward.
In their fourth chapter, prosecutors said Burke threatened to block a proposed admission fee increase at the Field Museum, home of Sue the T. rex. All because the daughter of his longtime council ally, former Ald. Terry Gabinski, 32nd, did not get a paid internship, the sort of political faux pas in Chicago that left Burke complaining of being “embarrassed” in front of friends.
So far, prosecutors have only gotten to the Burger King and Field Museum installments.
Still weeks away is Burke’s defense case, when his lawyers have said they will call to the witness stand former 25th Ward Ald. Daniel Solis, the government mole whose recordings have played a major role in the corruption cases of both Burke and former House Speaker Michael Madigan, the Chicago Democrat who faces his own trial in April.
Along with racketeering, Burke, 79, is charged with federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Longtime Burke associate Peter Andrews, 73, is charged in the alleged Burger King scheme with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.
A third defendant, real estate developer Charles Cui, faces bribery-related counts in an alleged scheme to get Burke to push city bureaucrats into approving a permit for the Binny’s sign.
They have all pleaded not guilty.
‘Riot act’
As the first few witnesses took the stand, prosecutors made Burke sound as if he were a politician stuck in the glory days of the old Democratic machine, where a patronage job could be secured by a phone call and aldermanic clout.
Burke, who became an alderman in 1969 under Mayor Richard J. Daley, acknowledged on one secret recording that he read the “riot act” to a Field Museum official in 2017 after the slight over the internship.
Caught on a recording, Burke unleashed his anger when he received a call from Deborah Bekken, then the Fields’ government affairs director, who wanted his imprimatur for a museum admission fee increase even though it was up to the park board to make the decision.
To her surprise, she testified, Burke gave her a stern message that he could make a quick call to the park board and that fee hike would suddenly go “nowhere.”
Bekken said she considered it a threat and immediately sent an email up the chain with a warning in the subject line: “We have a problem.”
While hardly the shakedown of the century, the Field Museum episode — perhaps more than any other allegation in the indictment — demonstrated Burke’s clout when he was in office, not only over the City Council but with connections and friendships that gave him sway over large swaths of city life.
The recordings played for the jury last week showed that when Burke expressed his displeasure over the internship snafu, officials at one of the top museums in the world fell over themselves trying to placate him, brainstorming ideas to get back on Burke’s good side even though he had no direct oversight of the museum’s affairs.
Bekken testified she suggested offering Burke a “mea culpa prize,” such as “an internship that he can award as a scholarship to an intern of his choosing?”
The museum’s mad scramble to figure out how to undo any damage, including the top brass wringing hands over the potential Burke backlash during a high-level meeting of the institution’s executive team, may be as illustrative as it gets in Chicago’s know-somebody politics.
The amount of deference museum officials gave Burke became more obvious in a secretly recorded apology call from Field President Richard Lariviere.
While he admitted to jurors he was pouring it on thick in trying to smooth things over with Burke, Lariviere turned up on one telephone recording telling Burke that, “when you call, Ed, everybody knows, we jump.”
Lariviere conceded he immediately called Burke when the alderman dressed down Bekken.
Despite Burke’s annoyance, though, Lariviere testified he did not think the museum’s pitch for a $2 fee increase was ever in jeopardy.
The museum eventually offered Gabinski’s daughter the chance to apply for a full-time paid position with starting pay in the range of $47,500 a year, but she didn’t apply because she had landed elsewhere and was happy, according to testimony.
On cross-examination, both Bekken and Lariviere testified they never heard Burke actually demand that she get a job, a point the Burke team sought to drive home.
The question hanging is whether the jury will consider a recommendation from Burke as tantamount to a direct order.
Have it your way?
The major testimony in the Burke case at this point focused on how he took a special interest in a Burger King nestled in his Southwest Side ward along South Pulaski Road, allegedly because he wanted the owners to give his law firm all of the property tax business for their dozens of Chicago area fast-food restaurants.
In a moment of high drama, Shoukat Dhanani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns the local Burger Kings, testified that he agreed to hire Burke’s law firm in hopes that it would free him to move ahead with a long-stalled remodeling of his restaurant inside the 14th Ward’s borders.
One striking piece of evidence jurors saw last week was a 2017 FBI surveillance photo from inside that Burger King, then a dingy restaurant in the Archer Heights neighborhood, where the impeccably dressed alderman met with Dhanani, his son and other company officials dressed more casually on a sweltering June day.
For all the mega-deals Burke made through the decades, the image of him holding court at a Burger King while sitting at a small plastic table in his dark suit, shiny black shoes and silver hair — right next to a yellow folded “wet floor” warning sign — gave a somewhat bush-league whiff to Burke’s alleged scheme.
A separate photo, taken as the group toured the Burger King’s parking lot, showed that Burke’s aide, Andrews, wore shorts to the meeting, befitting the “Part-Time Pete” image his defense team pushed in opening statements.
Prosecutors used Dhanani’s testimony, emails and wiretapped calls to tell a tale of Burke actively throwing up roadblocks to the remodeling project as he pressed for his law firm to represent all of Dhanani’s Burger Kings on tax matters.
Unbeknownst to Dhanani, Burke had requested that his staff look into who was handling real estate tax work for Dhanani’s company, according to evidence presented by prosecutors.
At one point, Burke allegedly told Andrews to shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through.
The jury also heard a recording of Andrews telling Burke he’d play as “hardball as I can” with Dhanani’s company.
In December 2017, with the Burger King rehab in limbo for months, Dhanani testified he flew to Chicago and met with Burke at the downtown Union League Club. It was there that he agreed to put Burke’s firm in touch with his property tax people in Houston, Dhanani said.
“My gut feeling was maybe since I had not responded about the property tax business, maybe that’s why we had been shut down,” Dhanani testified. “I didn’t see any other reason why it would be.”
Testimony also indicated Burke’s office pressed Dhanani for new driveway permits even though the Burger King had been open for years.
Under questioning from one of Burke’s lawyers, Dhanani acknowledged nobody actually told him the Burger King project was held up because he had yet to hire Burke’s law firm.
Nevertheless, Dhanani testified he’d never had to meet with a local alderman over a building permit issue for any of his restaurants, not just in Chicago, but anywhere in the country.
“Ever had a public official ask you to hire his private business after you sought approval for a permit?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker.
“No,” Dhanani testified.
Along with being one of the four main schemes in the Burke trial, the Burger King chapter contributed heavily to the downfall of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s 2019 mayoral candidacy.
Following Burke’s urging, Dhanani testified, he also attempted to donate $10,000 to Preckwinkle but ran into a snag because it was over the limit for an individual donor.
The revelation of the donation became an explosive campaign issue that hurt Preckwinkle’s campaign because it highlighted her political ties to Burke when he was charged in January 2019 with extortion, an allegation later folded into his racketeering case.
Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot seized upon the political connection to attack Preckwinkle and ended up defeating her in a landslide in 2019′s mayoral runoff.
Dhanani, meanwhile, finished his remodeling and never ended up giving any tax appeal business to Burke.
After the Burger King evidence is finished later this week, prosecutors will queue up the allegations against Burke in the trial’s chapters about the Old Post Office and the developer’s efforts to put up the Binny’s sign.
Then the defense teams will have a chance to try making sure the once-mighty alderman and his co-defendants don’t have to worry about putting sentencing dates on their calendars.