‘I was working under the direction of the government’: Calm and cool former Chicago alderman and FBI mole Daniel Solis heats up Ed Burke corruption trial

CHICAGO — Former Chicago Alderman Daniel Solis testified for about three hours Tuesday in the corruption trial of his former City Council colleague, Ed Burke, whose attorneys immediately challenged Solis about the motives behind his unprecedented turn as an FBI mole.

Solis was called by Burke’s defense team just moments after prosecutors rested their case in chief. He was questioned at length about the dozens of recorded phone calls and videotaped meetings he made of Burke that formed the backbone of the racketeering charges in the case.

Burke’s attorneys also briefly touched on the deferred prosecution deal Solis received from the U.S. attorney’s office in return for his cooperation, an agreement that will leave him not only without a criminal conviction but also continuing to collect his $100,000-a-year city pension.

Solis’ long-awaited face-off with his old colleague in a Chicago federal courtroom marked a bombshell moment in Burke’s high-profile trial, which is now in its sixth week at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. He was on the stand for about three hours, after which federal prosecutors declined to cross-examine him and Burke’s defense attorneys rested. Jurors could hear closing arguments as early as Wednesday.

Solis walked into the courtroom just before 1:30 p.m., stone-faced and grayer than he was when he left the public eye five years ago.

Across the room, Burke leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers in front of him.

Burke attorney Chris Gair’s questioning quickly became loud and theatrical; he repeatedly thrust his fingers in the air, and his voice echoed through the crowded courtroom.

Solis, by contrast, answered in quiet, mild tones.

“Now sir, your reason for agreeing to cooperate with the government was to save yourself, wasn’t it?” Gair asked.

“Yes,” Solis said.

“This was not out of some public spirit on your part, correct?” Gair asked.

“I don’t know what you mean by public spirit,” Solis replied.

Gair responded with venom: “I know you don’t know what I mean by public spirit, sir.”

Prosecutors immediately objected.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sustained the objection, warning Gair that it was not his job to testify.

The early part of the testimony proceeded in fits and starts, with prosecutors frequently raising objections and the defense requesting sidebars.

Burke has been unusually fidgety but has looked intently at Solis, leaning back with his right elbow on an arm of the chair and sometimes rolling his forefinger slowly up and down in parallel with his lips.

When Burke’s attorney pressed Solis if he cooperated as an undercover mole, Burke rubbed his left ear, raised his chin slightly and cracked a minor smile.

Among the spectators in the crowded courtroom were former Chicago Aldermen Proco “Joe” Moreno and Tom Tunney, along with Pat Murray, a former police union vice president.

In response to Gair’s loud and at times sarcastic questioning, Solis remained stubbornly mild-mannered. Each time Gair asked if he had lied, if he had cooperated just to save his skin, he stated plainly and quietly: “Yes.”

“You told Mr. Burke that (the Post Office developers were) receptive but not committed, isn’t that right? And that was a complete fabrication, correct?” Gair asked. “You just made it up!”

“I didn’t make it up, I was working under the direction of the government,” Solis said, very softly.

And even though Burke asked Solis to recommend his law firm to the developers, it was Solis who baited the government’s hook. He was the one who, on a phone call with Burke, specifically connected Burke’s aid to the developer to his law firm work, Gair pointed out.

Gair also repeatedly sought to downplay Burke’s influence, indicating that if Solis really wanted to, he could have cleared the bureaucratic hurdles for the Old Post Office development all by himself by reaching out to then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“At the top of the bureaucracy is the mayor, correct? Gair asked.

“It’s not that simple,” Solis said, adding that there are layers of bureaucracy. “The mayor’s not God. There’s always problems that have to be dealt with.”

Gair made perhaps his strongest points of the day when he methodically took Solis through the $20 million in TIF funding and the massive Class L tax incentive being sought by the Post Office developers.

Both required ordinances that went through Burke’s Finance Committee. However, Solis acknowledged that in both instances, Emanuel backed the proposals and they were done deals by the time they got to the City Council.

Gair also highlighted that Burke was left out of all the pomp and circumstance. At one point, he displayed a photo from the press conference announcing that Walgreens was going to anchor the Post Office development, which had been put together by Emanuel’s office before Burke’s committee even voted.

At the podium was Emanuel. Standing behind him was Solis. To either side of them were then-World Business Chicago President Andrea Zopp and the CEO of Walgreens.

“Is Ed Burke there?”

No

“He wasn’t even invited, was he?”

“I don’t think so,” Solis replied.

Burke’s attorneys ended by questioning Solis about the penalties — or lack thereof — he would face.

“You’re not going to serve any years in prison?” Gair asked.

Correct, Solis said.

“You’re not going to serve any days in prison?” Correct, Solis said again.

“Any hours?” Also correct, Solis said.

“You’re not going to be indicted for anything?” Gair asked.

“That’s correct,” he said. Shortly afterward, he walked off the stand.

The highlight of the trial before Tuesday were the secret recordings made by Solis, who began cooperating with federal investigators in June 2016 after being confronted with evidence of his own corrupt acts.

Solis captured Burke in private meetings and phone conversations as he allegedly plotted to win law business from the New York-based developers of the $600 million Old Post Office project.

For awhile it seemed as though the Solis-Burke confrontation would not happen. Prosecutors decided months ago not to put Solis on the stand, apparently betting that the recordings would speak for themselves.

But Burke’s attorneys told Kendall last month they planned to call Solis, a risky move that some believed was a bluff, but one they have now made good on.

Before the jury returned for testimony Tuesday, Burke attorneys confirmed that Burke will not take the witness stand in his own defense, leaving Solis as their marquee witness.

Meanwhile, Solis’ turn on the stand comes more than five years after he virtually disappeared from city life, just as the Burke investigation was going public.

In one of Solis’ last public appearances, the longtime 25th Ward alderman and Zoning Committee chairman talked in a television interview about his surprise decision to retire, and his advice to Burke to think about doing the same.

“I think Alderman Burke should reconsider (running for reelection),” Solis said in the WTTW interview on Nov. 26, 2018, three days before Burke’s City Offices were raided by the FBI. “You got money, you got a great family, you got grandkids. Why do you want to run?”

Solis’ cooperation was exposed after Burke was charged in early 2019. His deal with prosecutors was finally made public last year. In it, he was charged with a single count alleging he took money from developers who had business before his Zoning Committee. The charge will be dropped in 2025 as long as he completes his cooperation satisfactorily.

Solis helped build cases not only against Burke but also against ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who faces his own racketeering trial in the spring.

Prosecutors rested their case in chief Tuesday afternoon after calling a total of 37 witnesses over 16 days. Prosecutors’ final witness, an FBI special agent who testified Monday about the City of Chicago ethics ordinance.

Before the jury was called into court Monday, Kendall warned the defense again, “You can’t call (Solis) just to impeach him. If it suddenly turns into solely impeaching, then he stops his testimony.”

Burke attorney Gair said he’s been trying cases in Chicago for a long time and “I haven’t lied to a federal judge yet, and I’m not gonna start today.”

“That’s a good thing,” Kendall said.

The 14-count racketeering case alleges that Burke used his significant City Hall power to try to get business for his private law firm from developers of the Old Post Office, owners of a Burger King in his Southwest Side 14th Ward and a developer desperate to install a sign for a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side.

He is also accused of threatening to block an admission fee increase at the Field Museum to retaliate against officials who failed to give a paid internship to a daughter of one of his longtime City Council allies.

The Solis recordings are related only to the alleged Old Post Office scheme, which was the longest-running and potentially the most lucrative — though Burke’s attorneys have emphasized that, in the end, Burke’s firm never actually got a dime from the developers he is accused of trying to extort.

The recordings have Burke saying lines that have surely stuck in jurors’ minds: He was “not motivated” to help the developers, he said, since “the cash register has not rung yet.” When the developers dragged their feet, he told Solis “as far as I’m concerned they can go (expletive) themselves.” And perhaps most memorably, he asked Solis on a wiretapped call: “So did we land the, uh, the tuna?”

Meanwhile, the defense is expected to key in on whether Solis was “scripted” by the FBI to feed lies to Burke in an effort to get him to bite. The jury will be instructed that law enforcement is permitted to use ruses as part of an investigation but Burke’s attorneys will attempt to raise questions in jurors’ minds about it nonetheless.

In opening statements, Gair told jurors that Solis was “Exhibit A in the world of people who are corrupt and untruthful.”

“The government told him what to say and then he spit it back at Ed Burke, a whole pack of lies, and he did it for two years with one object in mind: keep himself from going to prison,” Gair said.

Burke, 79, who served 54 years as alderman before leaving the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts, including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.

His longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., 73, is charged 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.

Cui, 52, is facing counts of federal program bribery, using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and making false statements to the FBI.

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