CHICAGO _ Longtime Alderman Edward Burke, one of Chicago's most powerful figures and a vestige of the city's old Democratic machine, has been charged with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try to steer business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward.
The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court comes five weeks after the FBI carried out a stunning raid on Burke's City Hall office, working for hours behind windows covered with brown butcher paper before leaving down a back staircase with computers and files.
According to the one count, Burke in 2017 tried to extort the owners of a company that operates dozens of fast-food restaurants in the Chicago area and needed help with permits for remodeling a restaurant in Burke's 14th Ward on the Southwest Side.
Sources said it was a Burger King located at 4060 S. Pulaski Rd. _ the same restaurant that Laquan McDonald passed by moments before he was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer in October 2014.
The complaint also alleged Burke asked one of the company's executives _ identified only as Individual B _ to attend a political fundraiser for "another politician" in December 2017. The executive couldn't attend because of bad weather but "felt it necessary" to donate $10,000 to the politician in order to keep Burke happy, according to the charges. The donation was later amended to $5,600 because of limits on contributions.
As a consummate insider with his hands on many of the city's levers of power, Burke is arguably one of the biggest fish ever reeled in by the U.S. attorney's office, which has famously indicted a succession of Illinois governors, aldermen and other politicians in a seemingly never-ending parade of graft.
While the allegations have a familiar ring, the details in the 37-page complaint hint that it could be the tip of the iceberg. According to the complaint, the FBI had won a judge's approval to wiretap Burke's cellphone and was already recording his calls before the alleged shakedown at the center of the charge began to unfold in May 2017.
The evidence also includes emails and other documents, according to the complaint, which was filed Wednesday and unsealed Thursday.
Burke, attired in a charcoal pinstriped suit and pink tie, waited in court Thursday for his initial appearance at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse before a magistrate judge.
The criminal charge was jaw-dropping even for a city with a long history of public corruption. While dozens of his City Council colleagues have been convicted and sent to prison over the decades, Burke was largely seen as too clever or sophisticated to be caught. He had faced federal scrutiny several times before but always escaped charges.
For decades, the Southwest Side alderman has used his iron grip on the City Council's Finance Committee and key role in slating Cook County judges to build a massive amount of political capital.
Burke, who turned 75 last week, often decides whether Chicago's most important legislation will move forward. He controls millions of dollars in campaign funds. He is the sole steward of the city's $100 million workers' compensation program. And he plays a crucial role in redrawing the city's ward maps _ a key in maintaining political power amid shifting demographics.
He's also married to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, who was quietly sworn in to a second 10-year term on Nov. 29, the same day her husband's City Hall and 14th Ward offices were raided. The FBI carried out a second search of Burke's City Hall office on Dec.13.
After the complaint was made public Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has concluded it would be "unacceptable" for Burke to continue as chairman of the Finance Committee, according to one top mayoral aide who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. How soon such a move might happen remains unclear.
Burke himself could choose to step down or Emanuel could force a vote on the matter at the City Council's next meeting Jan. 23.
According to the criminal complaint, the alleged shakedown began in May 2017 when the two fast-food executives approached Burke for help with permits needed to reconstruct a restaurant in his ward.
In a meeting the next month, Burke allegedly demanded that the executives give his law firm, Klafter & Burke, business in exchange for his help. Later, Burke called a "public official" from the state where the company was based to talk about the meeting.
"I'll let him know how important you are," the undisclosed official said, according to the complaint.
Burke allegedly replied, "Well, you're good to do that but I'd also like to get some of his law business."
In another recorded call from June 2017, Burke expressed impatience with one of the executives, who had apparently moved forward with construction without enlisting the alderman's law firm, according to the complaint.
"And, um, we were going to talk about the real estate tax representation and you were going to get somebody to get in touch with me so we can expedite your permits," Burke told the executive _ identified only as Individual B.
Later, Burke had a stop-work order placed on the project and also sent a Chicago Department of Transportation inspector to the site to issue tickets for failure to procure a permit for a driveway that actually had been previously obtained, according to the charges.
In October 2017, a field rep for the restaurant company sent an email concerning Burke's interference with the project.
"I know these guys are very powerful and they can make life very difficult for all of our Chicago stores," the rep wrote, according to the complaint.
Known for his bold pinstripe suits, throwback style and a love of Chicago lore, Burke was first elected as the ward's Democratic committeeman in July 1968 after his father, Alderman Joseph P. Burke, died of lung cancer while in office. The following year, the onetime Chicago police officer won election as alderman. He has held the post ever since, rising from a young ward heeler to one of the most influential council members the city has seen over the last half century.
In his rise to political power, Burke also built a lucrative business as one of the city's most prominent property tax appeals attorneys, routinely saving some of Chicago's largest business interests millions of dollars on their tax bills.
He was known in the 1980s as a key player in the racially heated Council Wars when a bloc of white aldermen led by him and Alderman Ed Vrdolyak feuded with Harold Washington, often blocking the initiatives of Chicago's first black mayor.
Now more than a quarter-century later, Burke and Vrdolyak have been reunited in a strange sense: Both face pending criminal charges at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. Vrdolyak, who was convicted of real estate fraud years after he left the City Council and served a year in prison, is scheduled to go on trial in April on tax-related charges stemming from the massive tobacco company settlement in the 1990s.
In his 50 years in politics, Burke has been under federal scrutiny several times before but never charged.
In 2012, city Inspector General Joseph Ferguson sought access to records from the workers' compensation program to review it for waste and inefficiency. Burke denied Ferguson access to those records, contending they fell outside the watchdog's jurisdiction. That same year, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas for the program's database, injury records, medical assessments and claim investigation records dating to January 2006.
Federal authorities also had subpoenaed similar records, but nothing appeared to have come of those requests.
Federal authorities also sought records from Burke's Finance Committee in 1995 as part of Operation Haunted Hall _ a probe centered on ghost payrolling that led to the convictions of about three dozen elected officials, their political cronies and relatives.
Marie D'Amico, daughter of then-39th Ward Alderman Anthony Laurino, held ghost-payrolling jobs with the Finance Committee from 1991 to 1993, purportedly overseeing workers' compensation claims, federal authorities said at the time. Back then, Burke blamed a dead man _ Horace Lindsay, D'Amico's supervisor at the Finance Committee _ for forging time sheets to cover her behavior.
"I don't supervise the personnel," Burke said then. "Do you expect I should know where everybody is, all 75 or 80 people or whoever's there?"
At the time, officials had been looking closely at Burke since former short-time Alderman Joseph A. Martinez, who was a lawyer in Burke's private law office and onetime Finance Committee employee, pleaded guilty to charges that he held ghost jobs with three City Council committees while working full time for Burke's law firm.
In late 1997, Burke was under investigation again, this time by a federal grand jury. At the time, Burke and 11th Ward Alderman Patrick Huels, the former floor leader for then-Mayor Richard M. Daley, drew the federal heat. The grand jury subpoenaed the two aldermen's campaign finance records, records of their personal campaign committees and financial payments awarded by the Finance Committee and the Transportation Committee, chaired by Huels at the time. Huels recently had resigned after admitting he borrowed $1.25 million from a Daley friend who also was a city contractor.
In 1998, federal agents subpoenaed city financial records of payments to Michael Pedicone, a lawyer working for Burke's Finance Committee who also served as president of a security firm that was part of an investigation of City Hall's financial dealings. Burke was the licensee in charge of the security firm, SDI Security Inc. Huels was an owner.
The loan that led to Huels' resignation helped bail out the security guard agency, which owed the Internal Revenue Service for failing to pay federal employment taxes.
At the time, Burke withstood calls to resign, saying Pedicone had been paid $490,000 in legal fees by the committee since 1989, primarily to represent the city in claims filed by employees in work-related accidents.
"I have no intention whatsoever of stepping down," Burke said then, "simply because I have done nothing wrong."
