A day after telling lawyers for indicted ex-Ald. Edward M. Burke they do not intend to have ex-Ald. Danny Solis testify at Burke’s upcoming trial, federal prosecutors asked a judge for permission Thursday to have FBI agents introduce Solis’ secret recordings at the trial instead.
The nine-page filing from Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker confirms that the feds do not plan to call Solis to the witness stand. However, it also suggests that their decision is conditioned on U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall granting the request.
If she does, Streicker wrote that Solis would not be called “unless defendant Burke raises an entrapment defense.”
Specifically, Streicker wrote that prosecutors want to introduce recordings of “in-person meetings” involving Solis and Burke through the testimony of FBI special agents. She wrote that one or more agents are expected to testify at Burke’s trial about the process used to place recording devices on Solis.
The in-person meetings at issue took place between 2016 and 2018, Streicker wrote. They were all audio recorded “and most were also video recorded,” she explained. Solis used three recording devices, one of which recorded audio and video while the others only recorded audio.
Agents placed and activated the recording devices on Solis before each of his pre-planned meetings, Streicker wrote. The FBI then collected two of them on the same day of each meeting. The feds gave Solis a third audio recording device “to record unplanned meetings,” according to Streicker.
None of the devices appeared to have been tampered with, Streicker wrote. Nor is there any evidence that Solis turned the recording devices on or off outside the presence of law enforcement, she argued, though Solis had the ability to do so.
Not only is Solis a key witness in the feds’ case against Burke, prosecutors have called him one of Chicago’s “most significant cooperators in the last several decades.” Solis also helped them build a racketeering conspiracy case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
The Chicago Sun-Times first revealed Solis’ cooperation with the feds in January 2019. He had agreed to work with the government — recording Burke, Madigan and others — after investigators confronted him in 2016 with evidence of his own wrongdoing.
A 2016 FBI affidavit first obtained by the Sun-Times alleged that Solis received “a steady flow of personal benefits” from people for whom he had taken or offered official action. The benefits allegedly included Viagra, prostitution services, the use of a multi-million dollar farm and campaign contributions.
That past conduct could become the subject of an intense, blistering cross-examination if Solis takes the witness stand. Solis is now formally charged with bribery, but the feds are expected to seek dismissal of that charge if he holds up his end of a deferred-prosecution agreement due to end in April 2025.
Burke, who left office in May after a record 54 years on the City Council, faces trial Nov. 6 on a racketeering indictment handed up in May 2019. He is accused of using his seat to steer business to his private law firm amid schemes that involved the Old Post Office, a Burger King at 41st Street and Pulaski Road, and a development project on the Northwest Side.
He is also accused of threatening to block a fee increase at the Field Museum because it didn’t respond when he recommended a friend’s daughter as an intern.
Also set to face trial with Burke are political aide Peter Andrews and developer Charles Cui.
