A Cook County judge on Thursday rejected a motion to dismiss weapons and misconduct charges against a former 45th Ward superintendent who allegedly tried to sell a World War II- era machine gun to an undercover federal agent while working a city job.
The ruling sets the stage for the case to potentially go to trial later this year.
Defense attorney Jim McKay, his voice rising to an impassioned shout, told Judge Kenneth Wadas that if the court allowed the case against Charles Sikanich to continue, authorities might as well start charging veterans at VFW halls too.
“What about all of the cannons out in front of every VFW hall in the United States?” McKay asked. “If that’s the case, then everyone at that VFW hall should be charged too. This is insane.”
Much of McKay’s arguments focused on issues that he will almost certainly raise if Sikanich goes to trial, including whether it would have been possible to make the “wall hanger” machine gun operational again.
While the status of the gun will likely remain a prime defense argument, McKay’s motion Thursday focused more narrowly on whether the statute of limitations had passed to charge Sikanich in the first place.
The machine gun that the 40-year-old Sikanich is accused of possessing is a “war trophy” that General Douglas MacArthur allowed veterans to bring home with them after fighting for freedom, McKay said.
As far as Sikanich and members of his family knew, the gun didn’t work and had long been rendered inactive, “a paper weight,” as McKay described it.
In the 60’s, Sikanich’s grandfather registered the gun with the Internal Revenue Service because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms hadn’t been founded yet, McKay said. Decades later, in 2015, Sikanich’s mother got help from federal authorities to re-register the gun after it was passed down to her.
The federal government had known about the existence of the weapon for decades — and yet Sikanich had not been charged until 2022, McKay argued.
Even after it was seized by agents at Sikanich’s home and he explained the gun didn’t work, the state delayed bringing charges, McKay said, noting that federal authorities never attempted to bring the case to court under their jurisdiction.
Prosecutors with the Illinois attorney general’s office have countered that Sikanich was charged after he allegedly tried to sell the gun to an AFT agent and was seen arriving at the meeting in a Department of Streets and Sanitation vehicle.
Sikanich allegedly told agents his mother would complete the sale of the weapon “as he hoped to avoid complications to his role as a superintendent of Chicago’s 45th Ward.”
Prosecutors said he wasn’t immediately charged due to other ongoing investigations, but argued they had not missed the window to do so because the date of the offense was more recent — Aug. 18, 2021 when Sikanich “directed federal agents to a secret location within his residence to retrieve it,” Assistant Attorney General Jonas Harger wrote in response to the defense motion.
Prosecutors have maintained that the gun could easily have been made active again. “It’s a war weapon. It was designed to mow people down,” Harger said in court.
Judge Wadas sided with prosecutors, though he noted he was only ruling on the arguments about the timing of the investigation and charges, not on other issues that could be raised at trial. A date for the trial was expected to be set at a hearing next month.
In 2021, a community website that is critical of the ward’s alderman, Jim Gardiner, published text messages that showed the alderman making crude, misogynistic and homophobic remarks about some of his peers on the City Council and political consultants who worked for Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Other texts that showed Gardiner seeming to withhold ward services from residents based on their political leanings attracted the attention of federal investigators. He was reelected last year.
Gardiner and Sikanich also faced a lawsuit filed by construction worker Benjamin George, who claimed the alderman and Sikanich harassed him and ultimately had him arrested under false pretenses after he found Sikanich’s cellphone and tried to return it at the 16th District police station.
The suit was dismissed last year by agreement of both parties, according to court records.