By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — A retired four-star U.S. Navy admiral was sentenced on Tuesday to six years in prison for his conviction on corruption charges that he agreed to exchange a military contract for a lucrative postretirement job.
Retired Adm. Robert P. Burke — once the second-highest uniformed officer in the Navy — was commanding its forces in Europe and Africa when he engaged in a bribery plot with two business executives, according to federal prosecutors.
A jury convicted Burke of four counts, including conspiracy and accepting a bribe, after a trial in May. A separate trial for Burke’s two co-defendants — Next Jump co-CEOs Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger — ended with a hung jury and a mistrial last Thursday.
Burke, 63, declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden in Washington, D.C., sentenced him.
“This was blatantly unlawful, as you well knew,” the judge told him. “But you did it anyway.”
The judge told Burke that he betrayed the public’s trust and his oath of office.
“This is a sad day and a sad chapter in the U.S. Navy,” McFadden said.
Prosecutors sought a 10-year prison sentence for Burke, saying he abused his powerful position to enrich himself at the Navy’s expense.
“Burke’s conduct was as blatant and egregious as it was damaging to the public’s trust in its leaders and corrosive to the integrity of the procurement system,” prosecutors wrote. “His offense demands accountability. His crime calls out for punishment.”
Burke’s attorneys say they will appeal his convictions. They cited his “lifetime of extraordinary public service” in asking the judge to spare Burke from a prison sentence.
“This is not a case of a career criminal,” they wrote. “It is the case of a single, tragic, and aberrant chapter at the very end of a life defined by honor, courage, and commitment.”
Kim and Messenger agreed to pay Burke a $500,000 salary with stock options projected to be worth millions of dollars, according to prosecutors. In exchange, they said, Burke ordered his staff to give a contract to Next Jump and promoted the company’s product to other senior Navy commanders.
Burke’s attorneys said a military commander with his experience could have landed a better-paying job in the private sector.
“He was not motivated by greed, but by a belief in the mission and product of the company,” they wrote.
In 2018, Next Jump had a multimillion-dollar Navy contract to provide workforce training to an office under Burke’s command. But the Navy terminated the “poorly received” pilot program after approximately one year, prosecutors said.
In 2021, Burke privately met with Kim and Messenger to discuss another contract. Kim and Messenger proposed a contract “to provide basically the same programming that had failed two years earlier,” according to prosecutors. Several months later, Burke ordered subordinates to ensure Next Jump had a contract to train Navy personnel in Italy and Spain, prosecutors said.
“The truth is, Burke knew this training was a waste of time and money, and not suitable for his command, let alone the entire Navy,” prosecutors wrote.
Burke later retired from the Navy and joined Next Jump in October 2022.
Reed Brodsky, one of Messenger’s attorneys, said there was no link between the job offer and the contract. Brodsky argued at trial that Burke repeatedly lied to Messenger and Kim about the contracting process.
“They relied on the admiral. The admiral was the expert. The admiral lied and concealed,” Brodsky told jurors, according to a transcript.
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