The Navy’s former second-highest-ranking officer was convicted of bribery and other counts Monday, becoming the senior-most member of the U.S. military ever convicted of committing a federal crime while on active duty.
Retired four-star Adm. Robert P. Burke was found guilty of steering work to a New York company in 2021 in exchange for a $500,000-a-year job after leaving the Navy the following year. A jury in Washington deliberated for three days in the
high-profile military corruption case, which offered a
harsh glimpse of
challenges the Navy has faced in recent years in combating command failures and alleged conflicts of interest.
Burke helped lead the Navy’s response while serving as chief of naval personnel from 2016 to 2019 and vice chief of naval operations from 2019 to 2020. Over that span, the Navy managed the
fallout of the worst corruption scandal in its modern history, involving disgraced defense contractor Leonard “Fat Leonard” Francis. That case led to 34 prosecutions and 29 guilty pleas, most of them by Navy officers, although many
came undone because of prosecutors’ misconduct.
The Navy experienced
two deadly warship collisions, occurring about two months apart in 2017, that killed 17 sailors and exposed disastrous leadership, readiness and training breakdowns. It also met escalating complaints of
sexual harassment and sexual assault in the ranks, which contributed to the
unexpected retirement in August 2019 of Burke’s predecessor as vice chief of naval operations
.
Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Florida, has said he contacted technology services firm Next Jump after the wave of scandals to address a crisis of ethics and leadership. The e-commerce firm was working to convert its
nonprofit leadership training program into a second business line, starting with the Navy, whose critics said the military branch faced chain-of-command problems fostered by a sense of impunity among top commanders and silence among subordinates.
But prosecutors at Burke’s five-day trial suggested his own judgment failed him when he agreed to go to work for Next Jump while still in the Navy, citing what they called a “confession” they said he later gave investigators.
“I was allowing myself to be influenced in ways that were inappropriate,” Burke said in a secretly recorded Oct. 3, 2023, interview with Navy criminal investigators that was played for the jury. “I put myself in positions that allowed [Next Jump] to influence me, and I didn’t fully disclose everything.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca G. Ross in closing arguments Wednesday said Burke “violated the public trust for his own personal gain,” trading “a contract for a job.” She and co-prosecutors Trevor C. Wilmot and Kathryn E. Fifield hammered at Burke’s role as VCNO, the Navy’s second-in-command, citing his example for the lower ranks and using his past exhortations against him.
“This is the man who issued the standards of conduct for the entire Navy,” Wilmot told jurors, adding, “In May 2020 what he said about ethics was: We have to get it right every time. We’ve got to be better than these standards. And a single act or omission can destroy a lifetime of achievement.”
Burke, who retired as commander of naval forces for Europe and Africa, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, although first-time offenders generally face far lower penalties. He was also found guilty of performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts, punishable by up to 30 years.
Burke was charged along with Next Jump co-CEOs Charlie Kim, 51, and Meghan Messenger, 48, who face trial in August. All had pleaded not guilty,
questioning the logic of offering a $500,000-a-year job for what was ultimately a $355,000 award. A lawyer for Kim and Messenger declined to comment on Monday. Reed Brodsky, a lawyer for Next Jump, said he expected their trial to be “very different,” saying in a statement: “I expect the evidence will show that Burke and others at the Navy misled Charlie and Meghan in material ways, and they reasonably relied on Burke who was lying to them. I think it’ll be embarrassing for the Navy.”
A spokesman for the Navy declined to comment.
U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden also set Burke’s sentencing for August. Burke is expected to appeal his conviction.
Timothy C. Parlatore, an attorney for Burke, called the verdict “very surprising and disappointing,” adding that the government worked hard to keep evidence from the jury, including any testimony by
a potentially key witness and a lead Pentagon investigator, both of whom faced credibility challenges.
In most cases, “it’s the defense trying to prevent the jury from hearing the whole story. Here, the government was trying to present
a very narrow sliver of the evidence to the jury, and trying to prevent the defense from putting in any exhibits,” Parlatore said.
He said jurors heard only three snippets of a surprise 136-minute “knock-and-talk” interview that Burke agreed to give to investigators, in which he defended his conduct and denied a “quid pro quo.” Parlatore said Burke rejected Next Jump’s entreaties and believed he never accepted the job before he notified the Navy and received approval under strict Pentagon revolving-door ethics rules for his postretirement plans in May 2022.
The government declined to put on the stand a career Pentagon official who had a romantic relationship with Burke, who was the only uncharged person who attended a key lunch meeting in Washington in July 2021 where, prosecutors allege, Burke agreed with Kim and Messenger to award a contract and help win further Navy business for their company.
The woman, whom the defense cast as “a jilted ex-lover,” prompted an investigation of Burke by the Defense Department inspector general that turned into a criminal probe. But Burke’s defense has said the government was apparently unaware until after his indictment that a Virginia appeals court found in 2013 that the woman had not been truthful in her divorce case and had tried to have her ex-husband arrested on false charges of abusing their child.
An extramarital affair by an officer, especially a senior commanding officer, could violate the military’s rule against adultery if it affected good order and discipline, although the rule exempts those who are formally separated and is rarely enforced against top officers. Parlatore has said Burke’s intimate relationship with the woman occurred while he was in the beginning stages of a divorce from his wife, but the couple eventually reconciled and remain married.
Burke’s defense also challenged the role of the lead Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent in his case, the
Fat Leonard case and a third Navy corruption case that ended with a defense contractor,
Frank Rafaraci, being sentenced to a year and a day in prison in November 2023
after pleading guilty to bribery for slipping envelopes stuffed with $33,500 in cash to a U.S. Navy official.
That agent, Cordell “Trey” DeLaPena, came under fire in a Fat Leonard-related case in which felony charges were
dropped against four former Navy officers because of prosecutorial misconduct. The Justice Department also
retreated from initial allegations that Rafaraci led a wider multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in the global industry that provides services to navy ships in ports overseas, which Parlatore alleged during Burke’s trial came after DeLaPena submitted a false affidavit in Rafaraci’s case in Washington.
Rafaraci’s attorney has said that investigators were headhunting for the next
Fat Leonard scandal, an investigation that rocked the Navy for years after 2013 when Malaysian defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis pleaded guilty to bribing scores of Navy officials so he could overcharge the Navy for port services in Asia.
Burke was indicted 10 days after
several Fat Leonard cases unraveled.
Still, prosecutors presented jurors with incriminating emails, texts and other statements by Burke, Kim and Messenger, beyond the admiral’s recorded remarks, as well as testimony by a top subordinate who said Burke gave a highly unusual order over staff objections to rush a small pilot training contract to Next Jump in January 2022. The training, for about 200 sailors in Naples and Rota, Spain, drew scathing reviews and was never pursued.
According to government evidence, Kim and Messenger said in April 2021 after a WhatsApp meeting that Burke wanted to work for Next Jump, “but we’re asking for a deal first.” Then, after a July 2021 meeting at the Belga Cafe restaurant in Washington, the executives emailed investors about a “three-phase” plan, in which Burke would use his position to award Next Jump a leadership training services contract, help promote Next Jump for further business with the U.S. or British navies, and then retire and join the company.
No follow-up contract ever materialized, and of the $350,000 contract, Next Jump’s share as a subcontractor was about $250,000. After Burke was hired, Messenger texted Kim that she had erupted at the ex-admiral over the results, saying “no contract no job,” prosecutors alleged. Burke worked only four months with Next Jump, drawing a prorated salary of about $167,000, before leaving the company.
The case has drawn prominent lawyers. Parlatore is a personal attorney and top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and he initially represented President Donald Trump in his federal classified-documents case. Kim is represented by William A. Burck, who served as a deputy to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in the George W. Bush White House, and who advised the Trump Organization until Trump recently moved to fire him because of his representation of Harvard University.
www.military.com
