CHICAGO (CN) — The federal corruption trial of ex-Chicago alderman Ed Burke reached a much-anticipated milestone Tuesday, as federal prosecutors began to play recordings of Burke's conversations secretly captured by his former aldermanic colleague Danny Solis.
Most of the recordings the jury heard dated to the late summer of 2016, when Burke and Solis — then the head of the city's finance and zoning committees respectively — were discussing a $600 million renovation project for the city's historic Old Post Office.
In one clandestinely-recorded talk from Aug. 26 of that year, Solis spoke on his attempts to network with the project developers. And Burke uttered a sentence that has come back to haunt him seven years later.
"While you’re at it, recommend the good firm of Klafter & Burke to do the tax work," he told Solis with a chuckle, adding that Solis could also get a "marketing arrangement" for his trouble.
Though Burke offering his private legal firm's services to a real estate developer is not illegal per se, most of the government's 14 charges against him rest on the theory that he used his power in city government to convince or coerce businesses into funneling work to Klafter & Burke. On Tuesday, FBI Special Agent Ryan McDonald told jurors how he and the rest of his team used Solis to gather evidence supporting that theory.
McDonald and his team first approached Solis in June 2016, when the then-alderman was unknowingly under his own two-year-old corruption investigation. The investigators claimed to have evidence showing Solis had performed favors for a property developer in his city ward in exchange for campaign contributions, and recordings in which he requested Viagra and trips to massage parlors from a political consultant named Roberto Caldero.
McDonald said Solis first spoke to a lawyer, but ultimately agreed to offer the FBI "proactive cooperation" for their investigations into Burke and other political figures. He spent the next two years recording his phone and face-to-face conversations with Burke, as well as reporting back to FBI agents on conversations he couldn't record. FBI agents even travelled with Solis when he served as a delegate to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia that July, McDonald said, as Burke was also in attendance.
At the height of the investigation, McDonald said his team was meeting with Solis on an almost daily basis.
"We typically reviewed calls at the end of ... each day," he said.
Occasionally, McDonald added, he and Solis' other handlers would even order the alderman to offer Burke false information — "ruses" — in order to lure Burke into saying something incriminating.
One such ruse was Solis falsely implying that the Old Post Office developers, a New York-based company called 601W, would offer Burke's law firm tax work in exchange for his help speeding the renovation along. Solis broached the topic in a recorded Sept. 26, 2016 meeting with Burke, after which Burke asked if Solis could "get [him] some face time" with the developers.
“Oh absolutely, absolutely,” Solis responded, further goading Burke by asking for help with "a marketing piece."
“I’m ... a believer in sharing the wealth,” Burke answered.
Prosecutors rewarded Solis with a deferred prosecution agreement in exchange for his help: instead of throwing the book at him like they since have Burke and his other former ally ex-Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, they would only hit him with a single felony bribery charge. McDonald also said that his team chose not to execute search warrants they had for Solis' offices in June 2016, reportedly to keep the Burke investigation out of the public eye.
Solis himself did not take the stand on Tuesday, and prosecutors said when the trial began that they have no intention of calling him. It's not clear yet if defense attorneys will call the former alderman-turned-informant once they begin their own case.
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