Ed Burke, formerly the powerful chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee, was sentenced to two years in federal prison and a $2 million fine in Everett McKinley Dirksen federal court in the city on June 24.
The sentence, by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, was well below the six to eight-and-a-half years recommended by federal sentencing guidelines and the 10 years requested by prosecutors for Burke’s sentencing in 2023 for crimes of extortion and extortion. promoters hire their law firm as a way to advance projects before the city council.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that the activity from 2016 to 2018 eliminates all of that [letters written to the judge in support of Burke’s character],” she said. “I have this window right in front of me.”
He also added: “I don’t know how to impress upon those who serve the public that what they are sacrificing is not simply their own life or their freedom, but that they are part of this erosion. democracy.”
The sentencing hearing also gave prosecutors a chance to list how all of Burke’s crimes defrauded the developers involved. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker had argued for the 97-month sentence because she said that hearing, “At the pinnacle of power in city government,” Burke “abused his power and exploited his position to to private profits again and again and again and again over a period of years.”
The amounts extorted from the three developers Burke’s business with was recorded by the FBI for the case were disclosed by Streicker during the evidentiary phase of the hearing in $105,000 for the rehabilitation of the Old Post Office at 601W Cos.; $65,000 for a Burger King in the old Burke neighborhood; $612,025 for a Binny’s Beverage Depot seeking to place a sign in the existing store where developer Charles Cui (a co-defendant) acted as an intermediary; and $47,500 for the Field Museum, which Burke asked to interview for her goddaughter to do an internship in order to advance business involving the museum by the city council.
