As the feds narrow their target: Who’s in the bull’s-eye?
Most afternoons, the corridors of Chicago City Hall are quiet and dim. Velvet ropes that corral visitors at City Council meetings hang near the elevators, dividing only empty space. Shoes squeak across barren lobbies. That’s typical.
There’s also a new mayor on the Fifth Floor. A new aura in the building. A cautiousness among colleagues. The feds have spooked the place.
On Wednesday, ordinances further empowering the city’s inspector general and banning certain types of outside employment for aldermen passed the City Council without a single dissenting vote after … no debate. Mayor Lori Lightfoot deserves credit for pushing the controversial changes. But the catalyst for easy passage was the feds. There’s nothing like fear to grease ethics reform in government.
With public officials’ fear comes attentive citizens’ curiosity: Where will the FBI agents and federal prosecutors turn now? Or in the Illinois political vernacular: Who’s next?
In the beginning there was Burke …
Since November when federal investigators papered the entrance of Ald. Edward Burke’s City Hall office during a raid, he has been indicted on 14 corruption counts. Also charged: Burke’s confidant and friend, Peter J. Andrews, and a developer allegedly involved in a shakedown, Charles Cui. Prosecutors accuse Burke, 14th, of leveraging his role in government to benefit his private law firm, which deals in property tax appeals. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In June, the FBI raided Ald. Carrie Austin’s South Side office in the 34th Ward. Agents were searching for documents, including those linked to the sale of her West Pullman home. She has not been accused of wrongdoing. And it turns out, a month earlier and unbeknownst to most, the feds had raided the homes of three allies of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan: longtime Madigan political operative Kevin Quinn, former Southwest Side Ald. Michael R. Zalewski and lobbyist Mike McClain.
Sources have indicated the feds are looking at possible connections between the three men, utility giant ComEd and payments by its lobbyists to Quinn. He had been fired from Madigan’s organization following sexual harassment complaints. Who in that mix might be getting favors from whom?
And, hey, is this U.S. Department of Justice operation a City Hall probe or a statehouse probe? Or both? The feds haven’t told the rest of us whether, or how, the pieces fit together. ComEd, a potent power player in Springfield, confirmed to regulators it had received a subpoena about its lobbying activities and would be cooperating with authorities.
Anybody talk to Danny Solis lately? No one?
Also linked to allegations of impropriety: former Ald. Daniel Solis. He came under federal scrutiny several years ago and evidently agreed to record conversations with his colleagues in government and politics in order to save himself. An affidavit filed in federal court and first uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times in January laid out how the feds surveilled Solis and monitored his calls long before Burke got slapped with an indictment.
Appointed to the City Council in 1996 when the former 25th Ward alderman, Ambrosio Medrano, pleaded guilty to corruption charges, Solis’ role as chairman of the City Council Zoning Committee gave him access to hungry, accommodating developers. Solis traded favors with those seeking his help at City Hall, the affidavit alleges. He threw a lavish party for his son at the Indiana farm formerly owned by Oprah Winfrey, but at the time owned by a real estate magnate who routinely had business before Solis’ committee. Solis also hit up developers for Viagra pills and joined at least one real estate friend at a massage parlor thought to engage in prostitution, the court filings allege.
Solis also allegedly pumped companies seeking his zoning help for campaign donations and used his influence to help his daughter squeeze her former business partners during a dispute.
And prosecutors in the filing allege Solis used a political fund to pay for his son’s private school tuition. Investigators intercepted calls to Solis from debt collectors. He was facing his own financial pressures, making him a more vulnerable target for cooperation.
The most important things, though, to understand about Danny Solis? If you believe the affidavit, he has a lot of legal exposure. And he knows a whole lot of city and state public officials. Solis eventually agreed to wear a wire to help law enforcement build cases against his friends. Included in Burke’s May indictment are partial transcripts of calls between Burke and Solis during which Burke appears willing to obstruct a developer’s plans until his law firm gets hired for property tax work.
“The cash register has not rung yet,” Burke says during one January 2017 call.
“Did we land the, uh, the tuna?” Burke asks Solis during another call.
If convicted, Burke would join the long list of Chicago aldermen found guilty on corruption charges linked to their official government roles. Burke has denied wrongdoing; voters in his Southwest Side ward rewarded him with another four-year term in February.
Solis also captured Madigan on recorded conversations with a developer who wanted to build a hotel in Chinatown. Madigan, according to what has been publicly released so far, offers the developer his law firm’s legal assistance but nothing more. Madigan has not been accused of wrongdoing.
But given the recent FBI raids, it’s clear the feds are shooting arrows at several rings on a target that’s growing narrower. They’re looking at some of the state’s and city’s most powerful political players — people who know one another, people who talk to one another on the phone. People who might not yet realize whether they’re on the outer rings ... or in the bull’s-eye.
Aldermen are on edge. Relationships are strained. Conversations are careful. Democratic legislators wonder whether the feds’ tour of Madigan’s realm creates risk-by-association for them too —what must voters be thinking?
The silence of the Dems. Most Republicans too.
The most crucial concern now within the state’s and city’s political class: Who else at City Hall, or in the statehouse, has been wearing a wire?
Democratic officials — Gov. J.B. Pritzker, all those legislators who report to Madigan, the party itself where Madigan serves as chairman — are awfully quiet. Even the Illinois Republican Party has been relatively low key as the feds investigate Democratic officials and their allies.
Is the transactional nature of politics and government in Illinois — the routine expectation of graft in government — finally headed for extinction?
Much as we hope that’s the case, we can only ... hope. The U.S. Department of Justice is mounting some sort of major offensive, evidently against The Chicago Way and maybe its cousin, The Illinois Way.
If only all of us could see who’s at the center of the feds’ narrowing target.