The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
If Ald. Edward M. Burke goes to trial, it could still be at least a year away.A criminal investigation so big... the feds don't want to hand over all the evidence just yet.
Federal prosecutors plan to ask for an “early 2021” trial date in Burke’s sweeping racketeering case when they return to court next week. That’s according to a four-page status report filed Thursday at the request of U.S. District Judge Robert Dow.
That report says prosecutors have continued to turn over evidence as recently as Nov. 5 to lawyers for Burke and his two co-defendants, Peter Andrews and Charles Cui. So far, it says the feds have turned over more than 100 discs, more than 44,000 pages and “several boxes of hard copy material.”
However, there is additional evidence prosecutors don’t want to turn over until six months before the trial, according to the report. Defense attorneys say they understand the additional material to be “vast, and is made up in large part of recorded conversations.” The defense attorneys want the material sooner.
