Heightened tensions created by the war between Israel and Hamas have a federal judge reconsidering whether “distasteful” comments by ex-Ald. Edward M. Burke about Jewish people should be heard by jurors during his corruption trial next month.
Burke made his comments amid an alleged scheme involving the redevelopment of Chicago’s Old Post Office.
Explaining why he needed to leverage his position on the City Council to get tax work for his private law firm from a Jewish developer, Burke was allegedly recorded saying, “Well, you know as well as I do, Jews are Jews and they’ll deal with Jews to the exclusion of everybody else unless … there’s a reason for them to use a Christian.”
Burke’s comments first became public in 2021. Prosecutors called them “distasteful” but have argued they go to the heart of Burke’s alleged scheme.
“They go to show Burke’s intent to offer a quid pro quo. In other words, he had to do something for the developer in order for them to hire a non-Jewish lawyer,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said Monday.
U.S. District Judge Robert Dow sided with the feds on the issue in 2022, rejecting a Burke bid to strike it from the indictment. However, Dow acknowledged the comments were prejudicial and said Burke’s lawyers could raise the question again at a later date.
They did so during a lengthy hearing Monday in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, who inherited the case from Dow.
One of Burke’s defense attorneys, Kimberly Rhum, argued that any comment “made in the past seen as even remotely derogatory toward Jews would be” even more prejudicial now, as the “current situation in Israel and Gaza has dramatically changed.”
“Any member of the jury sympathetic toward what the Jewish people have endured might find Mr. Burke’s comments to be particularly distasteful,” Rhum argued.
Joseph Duffy, another member of Burke’s defense team, added “it is such a hot button right now, that’s not going to change in the next month, so we ask [that] you consider it.”
Saying she was “sympathetic” to the request, Kendall said she was “going to take it under advisement” and acknowledged that “circumstances have changed.”
Burke is set to face trial Nov. 6 on a 2019 racketeering indictment that alleged he used his seat on the City Council to steer business to his private law firm, Klafter & Burke, amid schemes that involved the Old Post Office, a Burger King at 41st Street and Pulaski Road, and a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side.
The onetime finance chair and longest-serving City Council member also is accused of threatening to block a fee increase at the Field Museum because it didn’t respond when he recommended his goddaughter as an intern.
Also set to face trial with Burke are political aide Peter Andrews and developer Charles Cui.
