Five years after virtually disappearing into thin air, former Ald. Daniel Solis made a rather public arrival at Chicago’s downtown federal courthouse Monday, ready to testify as the most highly anticipated witness in the corruption trial of his onetime colleague, Edward M. Burke.
Solis, whose bombshell cooperation with the FBI altered the trajectory of Chicago’s politics, arrived at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with his lawyer and walked right past a phalanx of news cameras staked out in the lobby media pit.
As word ricocheted around the courthouse that Solis had entered the building, a knot of federal agents gathering near the back of the courtroom prompted one of Burke’s attorneys to complain that it looked like a “SWAT team” and that jurors could get the impression that Solis was “in danger.”
But that turned out to be the high point of the day for Solis-watchers, as prosecutors have yet to put the finishing touches on their case.
In a twist, Solis is expected to be called not by prosecutors, but by Burke’s own attorneys who are gambling they might limit the damage the wiretaps and other secret recordings made by Solis if they can dirty him up on the witness stand.
Prosecutors’ final witness, an FBI special agent who testified Monday about the city of Chicago ethics ordinance, is among 37 government witnesses who took the stand over 15 days. Her testimony is slated to continue Tuesday at 1 p.m., after which prosecutors said they will rest.
Solis could take the stand shortly afterward.
Among the witnesses the jury of nine women and three men has heard from are the father-and-son owners of a Southwest Side Burger King who were allegedly pressured to hire Burke’s private law firm to do property tax appeals.
The city’s former Buildings commissioner told the jury Burke personally asked her to look into a permit issue for a developer who had agreed to hire the alderman’s law firm. And former officials at the Field Museum testified that Burke threatened to hold up a fee-increase request because he was angry they’d failed to interview the daughter of a Burke ally for an internship.
But the highlight of the government’s case has been 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.
Over the next two years, 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.
In court Thursday, Burke attorney Chris Gair was adamant that Solis would be their marquee witness, saying he intended to question the former 25th Ward alderman and Zoning Committee chair for “hours” on both the recordings he made and the unprecedented deferred prosecution deal he got from the U.S. attorney’s office in exchange for his efforts.
Meanwhile, prosecutors over the weekend filed a motion asking Kendall to strictly limit the kinds of questions Burke’s attorneys can ask Solis, and suggesting that defense attorneys should offer a more complete preview of what they expect him to say.
The defense also should not be allowed to ask Solis about the details of his cooperation deal, either, prosecutors wrote. But if they are, prosecutors want to elicit testimony that Solis’ cooperation extended beyond just Burke, to show that he had other “bargaining chips” to play in negotiating his deferred-prosecution agreement.
Burke’s attorneys responded by saying they should not have to disclose to the government in advance what is essentially a cross-examination of a hostile witness.
Before the jury was called into the courtroom 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.”
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.
Prosecutors on Monday presented evidence in the final episode outlined in the indictment, where Burke allegedly intervened in a permit dispute over a liquor store pole sign after the developer, co-defendant Charles Cui, entered into an agreement to hire Burke’s law firm, Klafter & Burke.
Cui is accused of hiring Burke’s private firm so Burke would use his clout to help with a pole sign permit for a Binny’s on the Northwest Side. He stood to lose significant money if the sign couldn’t be used, and jurors have seen evidence that he scrambled to get the permit approved.
Attorney George Reveliotis, who has represented Cui for years, told jurors Monday he assumed he would handle property tax work for Cui’s new development at the corner of Irving Park Road and Lamon Avenue.
Cui even emailed him in July 2017, saying “make sure to appeal hard, since it was vacant last year.”
But about a month later, Cui emailed Reveliotis again, saying he wanted to switch attorneys.
“Can I have Edward Burke handle 4901 W Irving Park property tax appeal for me, at least for this year?” Cui emailed. “I need his favor for my TIF money. In addition I need his help for my zoning etc for my project. He is a powerful broker in City Hall, and I need him now. I’ll transfer the case back to you after this year.”
Reveliotis stood down: “I completely understand,” he emailed in response, and Cui ultimately hired Klafter & Burke for the Irving Park Road property.
On cross-examination by Cui’s attorney Tinos Diamantatos, Reveliotis noted that Cui is an immigrant from China who is married with three children, and reiterated that Cui remains a very good client of his.
And, Diamantatos noted, it is an attorney’s responsibility to vet a potential client for conflicts of interest — not the potential client’s job.
Gair, meanwhile, had Reveliotis reiterate that Burke was not copied on the email in which Cui talks about his clout.
“As far as you know, it was all in his own head?” he asked.
Earlier Monday, former city zoning administrator Patricia Scudiero testified that Burke called her in 2017 and asked her to look into the denial of the pole sign permit. There was no way around the denial, she testified — the permit had been properly rejected.
Burke also had his office reach out to the buildings Commissioner Judy Frydland, who in turn asked her then-first deputy Matthew Beaudet to look into the matter. Beaudet, a lawyer by training, was something of the go-to expert on signage, he testified Monday.
Zoning requirements had changed since the pole sign had last been permitted, but Cui wanted to get it grandfathered in, arguing that it had been used continuously.
But Beaudet knew that was not true, he said. For one thing, Google Maps screenshots proved it, but more importantly, the sign was in Beaudet’s neighborhood and he was extremely familiar with that corner.
When Cui attorney Tom Moore sent along a photo purporting to show that the sign had been used to advertise vacancies in the building, Beaudet said it was obvious the picture had been photoshopped.
“That’s my neighborhood, I’ve lived there for 58 years, it’s my former bank,” he said. “I know what was there and what was not there.”
Cui had photoshopped a sign advertising the space for rent from the side of the building onto the pole sign, Beaudet contended, and jurors were shown Cui’s picture alongside a Google Maps screenshot that had the sign on the building.
Jurors also heard secretly recorded audio of Cui’s interview with FBI agents in November 2018. The recordings were introduced to support charges that Cui lied to the federal agents, including when he said he simply wanted to hire Burke to help with the pole sign fight because he was a “good tax appeal lawyer.”
When Cui was pressed on whether he ever had phone calls or other interactions with Burke on matters other than the TIF, he said he asked Burke for help with the dispute over getting approval for the pole sign, which had been denied.
At one point, Cui told agents: “Trust me, he doesn’t even remember my name, OK? That’s it, that’s all. You know?”
On cross examination, Diamantatos questioned why the agents asked Cui whether he had any “business dealings” with Burke instead of being more specific, such as asking if Cui had hired Burke for property tax appeals.
Cui at first answered he had none, but after one of the agents asked about Burke’s “firm,” he qualified it to say, “Yeah, he represents me for my property tax appeal.”
During his FBI interview, Cui also briefly invoked the name of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan, the once-mighty Chicago Democrat and longtime property tax appeals lawyer who faces his own racketeering trial in April, which includes allegations that he used his elected office to steer private law business his way.
When questioned about his relationship with Burke, Cui said on the recording: “And I tried to offer my business to, uh, to, uh, to Mr. Madigan too.”
Agents did not follow up with Cui about Madigan even though at the time the speaker was under increasing federal scrutiny.
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 lon-time 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.