DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro notched a significant legal victory Monday after retired four-star Navy Adm. Robert Burke was found guilty of bribery charges related to a scheme to steer government contracts to his future employer.
Burke, who served as the vice chief of naval operations during part of President Trump’s first term, was convicted of conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts from the US after a five-day trial.
Formerly the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer, Burke is now the senior-most member of the US military to ever be convicted of a federal crime.
“When you abuse your position and betray the public trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent,” Pirro said in a statement after the verdict. “Our office, with our law enforcement partners, will root out corruption – be it bribes or illegal contracts – and hold accountable the perpetrators, no matter what title or rank they hold.”
Burke, 63, was indicted in the case investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and the FBI’s Washington Field Office last May.
He was accused of accepting a $500,000 yearly salary and a grant of 100,000 stock options from his co-conspirators, Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger, in exchange for using his position as a Navy admiral to steer a government contract to an entity named in the indictment as “Company A.”
Kim and Messenger – the co-CEOs of “Company A” – had reached out to Burke on multiple occasions between 2019 and 2022 about the status of a government contract despite being warned by the Navy not to contact the four-star admiral, according to the Justice Department.
Company A had provided workforce training to a small component of the Navy between August 2018 and July 2019 before the company’s contract with the Navy was terminated in late 2019.
“Despite the Navy’s instructions, [Kim and Messenger] met with Burke in Washington, D.C., in July 2021, to reestablish Company A’s business relationship with the Navy,” according to the DOJ.
It was during that meeting that the trio agreed to the bribery scheme, which had Burke use his sway with Navy officers to award a more lucrative contract to Company A before his retirement and subsequent acceptance of the pre-arranged job with the company headed by Kim and Messenger.
Kim allegedly estimated the value of the future contract to be worth “triple-digit millions.”
In December 2021, Burke ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Company A – to train personnel under his command in Italy and Spain – and promoted it to a senior Navy admiral before his retirement.
The company, however, did not end up landing another contract with the Navy after Burke left.
Burke’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August, the same month Kim and Messenger are slated to head to trial on their bribery charges.
The retired admiral faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
“We’re disappointed with the verdict, but we are planning to appeal – and I think that there’s a viable appeal here,” Burke’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, told The Post.
Parlatore contends that the jury “did not get to hear all of the evidence,” including Burke’s “over two-hour interview” with law enforcement, of which the DC US Attorney’s Office “played less than two minutes of” in court.
“The judge didn’t let the jury hear the whole thing, so they didn’t really get the context” of Burke’s statements to investigators, Parlatore said.
“The real black eye is on the Pentagon here,” the lawyer continued, slamming the investigators. “DCIS [and] NCIS are two investigative agencies that are largely stocked with imbeciles, with little training, no ethics, no leadership, no adult supervision, and we allow them to destroy people’s lives.”
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