Burris won't face perjury charge in Senate scandal

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — U.S. Sen. Roland Burris won't face a perjury charge over statements he made to state lawmakers investigating how he got his job, but the junior senator still faces the task of salvaging his political future and shaking the stigma of his link to the disgraced former governor who put him in office.

Sangamon County State's Attorney John Schmidt announced Friday that there was insufficient evidence to prove Burris lied to a state House impeachment committee investigating then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich's brazen choice of Burris to fill President Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. The FBI had arrested Blagojevich three weeks earlier on an array of corruption charges, including one that he tried to auction off the Senate seat in exchange for political or personal cash.

Burris had promised a full accounting before the committee as a condition of his being seated in the world's most exclusive club, where he's the only black member. While Schmidt decided a jury wouldn't call the senator's statements lies, he said they were "incomplete."

"I have never engaged in any pay-to-play, never perjured myself, and came to this seat in an honest and legal way," Burris said in a statement in response to Schmidt's announcement. Burris was expected to speak to reporters later Friday in Chicago.

But even as the 71-year-old political soldier looks toward election to a full term in 2010 — supporters received an e-mail Friday morning soliciting donations of $10 to $250 — he has been shirked on Capitol Hill and still faces a Senate ethics committee investigation into his conduct.

The prosecutor's announcement "probably stops the bleeding," but doesn't improve Burris' political stature, said Kent Redfield, a political scientist affiliated with the University of Illinois at Springfield.

"Public opinion has become so hard. It's no longer whether he crossed a legal line, but the way he conducted himself in dealing with the governor," Redfield said. "It links him to a chapter in Illinois politics that everyone wants to get beyond."

With Senate Democrats making it clear they won't support a Burris election bid, party members in Illinois are champing at the bit for a chance.

First-term Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Christopher Kennedy, a Chicago businessman and son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, are all considering wading in.

The ethics committee, which is reviewing the circumstances of Burris' appointment, can recommend punishment for wrongdoing among Senate members. That action can include censure — a formal reprimand — or even ejection.