Jurors in the upcoming Chicago racketeering trial of former 14th Ward Alderman Edward Burke are going to hear a lot of names, including fellow aldermen, city commissioners, developers, architects and restaurant franchisees.
But one name they will not hear: Donald Trump.
That's because prosecutors have agreed to redact Trump's name from an undercover recording where Burke talked about how his private law firm had won property tax breaks for Trump's downtown Chicago skyscraper.
After prosecutors announced the decision at a pretrial hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall asked how exactly they planned to remove Trump's name, given his notoriety.
"How do you anonymize a reference to Trump? I mean, what are you going to say?" Kendall asked.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said her team will just edit the clip so instead of Trump's name, "there will be silence."
The decision came after Burke's legal team argued in a court filing that introducing Trump's name would prejudice the jury because the former president is "despised by a significant percentage of the population."
"Mr. Burke's legal work for [Trump] could cause many jurors to have an unfavorable impression of Mr. Burke and could create significant bias against him," the defense motion stated. Telling jurors about the Burke-Trump association is "fraught with the likelihood of unfair prejudice," the motion argued.
Burke, 79, was originally charged in a criminal complaint in January 2019, weeks after the FBI raided his City Hall office suite. He was indicted four months later on 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
The 59-page indictment outlined a series of schemes in which Burke allegedly tried to muscle developers into hiring his law firm, Klafter & Burke, to appeal their property taxes. The trial is expected to last up to six weeks.