Longest-serving Republican speaker's post-congressional career collapsed in scandal
By John McCormick
Former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who in less than a decade went from being one of the nation's most powerful politicians to serving a federal prison sentence, has died at age 84.
The coroner's office in Kendall County, Ill., announced the death Monday and said Hastert had been under hospice care.
Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in history, suffered a stroke in 2015 that hospitalized him for an extended period.
At the start of his career, Hastert was a high-school government and history teacher, as well as a wrestling and football coach. First elected in 1986 to represent a suburban and rural district west of Chicago, he retired from Congress in 2007 and worked as a Washington lobbyist.
In May 2015, his professional world collapsed when prosecutors alleged in a federal court indictment that he had hidden a secret for decades. It alleged he had agreed to pay $3.5 million to a former student he had sexually abused.
Hastert was never charged with a sex crime because the statute of limitations had expired but admitted at his April 2016 court sentencing that he "mistreated" and "took advantage" of some of the teenage wrestlers he coached at Yorkville High School, where he worked from 1965 to 1981. Federal prosecutors alleged at the time he had molested at least four boys.
As part of a plea deal, Hastert acknowledged that he had illegally avoided reporting requirements associated with bank withdrawals he made for hush-money payments. Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a "serial child molester" at the sentencing.
After serving 13 months at a federal medical prison in Rochester, Minn., Hastert denied in a 2018 deposition that anything sexual took place with a former student who had filed a civil lawsuit against him in 2016. The man, who said he had an unwritten $3.5 million hush-money pact with Hastert, was identified in the lawsuit only as James Doe.
The former student-athlete alleged that Hastert sexually abused him one night when they were at a motel during a wrestling event in the 1970s. Hastert said he was only helping the boy, then 14 years old, with a pulled groin injury.
After $1.7 million in payments, prosecutors said Hastert stopped giving the man money in late 2014 after authorities, aware of suspicious bank withdrawals, approached the former speaker to investigate whether he was being extorted. The investigation instead revealed decades-old allegations that Hastert had 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 weren't made public.
Before leaving Congress, Hastert accumulated millions in wealth mostly from real estate and then embarked on a lucrative lobbying career.
Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 to 2007, offered a calming presence for congressional Republicans following the departure of a more combative predecessor, Newt Gingrich.
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.
Hastert's personal business dealings stirred controversy in 2006 after it was revealed that he 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.
Before his time in Congress, during the 1980s, Hastert served in the Illinois General Assembly. He was a 1964 graduate of Wheaton College in suburban Chicago, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics, before completing a master's degree in education at Northern Illinois University.
Hastert met his wife, Jean Hastert, a fellow teacher, while working at the high school. The couple had two sons, Ethan and Joshua.