Former Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke has left the northwestern Illinois prison where he’s been held since September for his historic racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion conviction, officials have confirmed.
Burke transferred Tuesday from a low-security prison facility in Thomson to community confinement, according to a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson. That means Burke will either continue to serve his sentence in home confinement or a halfway house. His official Bureau of Prisons release date remains Feb. 20, the spokesperson said.
Burke’s two-year prison sentence raised eyebrows when it was handed down in June 2024 by U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, now the city’s chief federal judge. And in the end, it appears the punishment for Burke’s abuse of office is a total of nine months behind bars.
A lawyer for the former politician declined to comment Tuesday. A few weeks ago, when word surfaced that Burke might soon be leaving prison, the Sun-Times also reached out to Burke’s brother, former state Rep. Dan Burke.
Dan Burke said his brother had lost so much weight and was so hunched over, Chicagoans who knew him during his heyday as a political powerhouse would “barely recognize him.”
He also said Ed Burke’s wife, former Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne Burke, had dutifully made the hourslong drive to see her husband every weekend, taking a hotel room near the facility in Thomson.
Now another former political heavyweight is facing serious time in custody. Former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Blakey in June to 7 ½ years in prison.
That’s more than triple the amount of time Kendall handed to Ed Burke. However, Madigan’s lawyers have made clear they hope to keep him out of prison while he appeals his conviction.
Once the 81-year-old Ed Burke reaches his Bureau of Prisons release date, he is expected to begin serving a year of supervised release. During that time, the once-powerful politician will have to abide by several court-ordered conditions.
For example, records show Ed Burke will need to get permission to leave the northern judicial district of Illinois and report to the probation office within 72 hours. He’ll also be prohibited from possessing “a firearm, destructive device, or other dangerous weapon.”
When Ed Burke was first charged in 2019, authorities disclosed that 23 guns had been found in his offices.
Ed Burke will also be prohibited from communicating with Charles Cui, the developer convicted alongside him in December 2023, during his supervised release. Not only that, but records show Ed Burke will be prohibited from seeking employment as an elected public official.
That seems unlikely, even for the longest-serving City Council member in Chicago history.
Either way, Ed Burke seems to be near the end of a saga that began with the FBI’s raid of his offices in November 2018 and the original criminal charges against him in January 2019. The two events, and the news that then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis had secretly recorded him for the FBI, transformed the 2019 race for mayor, which ended with the election of Lori Lightfoot.
A grand jury handed up a broader indictment against Ed Burke in May 2019. But thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and a mountain of pretrial motions, it wasn’t until late 2023 that the powerhouse politician finally faced trial and was found guilty by a jury.
The case against Ed Burke involved schemes revolving around the Field Museum, the Old Post Office straddling the Eisenhower Expressway, a Burger King in Ed Burke’s 14th Ward and a Binny’s Beverage Depot on the Northwest Side.
The trial featured several secret FBI recordings, including one in which Ed Burke was famously caught asking Solis “Did we land … the tuna?” — a reference to business Ed Burke was trying to land for his law firm.
Ed Burke was caught up in the same aggressive corruption investigation that led to Madigan’s conviction earlier this year. Both men were convicted, in part, for schemes in which they enlisted Solis while trying to steer private business from the Old Post Office developers to their firms.
At the time, Solis was the powerful head of the City Council’s zoning committee.
Solis agreed to wear a wire for the FBI after agents confronted him with evidence of his own wrongdoing. Solis walked away from the investigation with no prison time — not even a criminal conviction — as a result of the deal he struck with the feds.