Hastert served 13 months in federal prison for hush-money scheme
J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in U.S. history, died at age 84 over the weekend, the Kendall County, Ill., coroner’s office said Monday. Hastert had been under hospice care at the time of his death.
His later years were defined by a federal prosecution and prison sentence. The Wall Street Journal, in reporting his death, described Hastert’s trajectory as one in which, in the span of less than a decade, he went from being one of the nation’s most powerful politicians to serving a federal prison sentence. In May 2015, prosecutors alleged in a federal court indictment that Hastert had hidden a secret for decades. The indictment alleged that he had agreed to pay $3.5 million to a former student he had sexually abused while coaching wrestling at Yorkville High School in Illinois, where he worked from 1965 to 1981.
Hastert was never charged with a sex crime because the statute of limitations had expired. But at his April 2016 sentencing, he admitted that he had “mistreated” and “took advantage” of some of the teenage wrestlers he coached. As part of a plea deal, Hastert acknowledged that he had illegally structured bank withdrawals to evade reporting requirements on the hush-money payments.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a “serial child molester” at sentencing. Federal prosecutors alleged at the time that Hastert had molested at least four boys. Hastert served 13 months at a federal medical prison in Rochester, Minn. He had suffered a stroke in 2015 that hospitalized him for an extended period.
In 2016, a former student-athlete identified in court filings as James Doe filed a civil lawsuit alleging an unwritten $3.5 million hush-money pact with Hastert. The man alleged that Hastert sexually abused him one night at a motel during a wrestling event in the 1970s, when the student was 14 years old. Hastert said in a 2018 deposition that he was only helping the boy with a pulled groin injury and denied that anything sexual took place.
Prosecutors said Hastert had paid $1.7 million before stopping in late 2014, after authorities, aware of suspicious bank withdrawals, approached him to investigate whether he was being extorted. The investigation instead revealed decades-old allegations of sexual contact with male teenagers. In September 2021, Hastert and the former student-athlete reached an out-of-court settlement just ahead of a scheduled civil trial; the terms were not made public.
Before his legal troubles, Hastert had built a long career in Illinois politics. He started as a high-school government and history teacher and a wrestling and football coach. First elected in 1986 to represent a suburban and rural district west of Chicago, he served in the Illinois General Assembly during the 1980s. He retired from Congress in 2007 and later worked as a Washington lobbyist.
Hastert succeeded Newt Gingrich as speaker in 1999 and held the gavel until 2007. During President George W. Bush’s administration, Hastert helped deliver tax cuts, support for the war in Iraq, trade agreements and a prescription-drug benefit disliked by many of the party’s fiscal conservatives.
His personal business dealings also drew attention. In 2006, it was revealed that Hastert had made a multimillion-dollar profit on land he bought and sold near his home for a proposed Prairie Parkway, for which he had secured federal funding. The then-speaker denied any improper financial dealings.
Hastert graduated in 1964 from Wheaton College in suburban Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in economics, and he later earned a master’s degree in education from Northern Illinois University. He met his wife, Jean Hastert, a fellow teacher, while working at the high school. The couple had two sons, Ethan and Joshua.