Disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert dies at 84
Former Rep. Dennis Hastert, who served eight years as speaker of the House — longer than any Republican in U.S. historical past — after which spent greater than a yr in jail after he left Congress for scheming to cowl up sexual abuse allegations, died over the weekend, based on Kendall County Coroner’s Office in Illinois.
He was 84.
“Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell confirmed that over the weekend, former US House Speaker John Dennis Hastert handed away at his residence on account of pure causes,” the coroner’s workplace stated in a Monday statement. “No additional data is out there for launch.”
Hastert, of Illinois, served within the House from 1987 to 2007 and have become speaker in 1999. He relinquished the speaker’s gavel in 2007 after Democrats took management of the chamber, then introduced his resignation from Congress earlier than the top of his eleventh time period.
Nearly a decade later, Hastert confronted allegations that he molested 4 youngsters, ages 14 to 17, within the Nineteen Seventies, when he was a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.
In 2015, Hastert pleaded responsible to structuring money withdrawals to cover hush-money funds to considered one of his sexual-abuse accusers. The following yr he was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. He was released from a jail hospital in 2017, a number of weeks forward of schedule.
At his sentencing listening to in 2016, Hastert stated he was “deeply ashamed” of his actions, including, “I’m the one one accountable,” NBC Chicago reported.
“I do know I’m right here as a result of I mistreated a few of the athletes I coached,” he stated. “The factor I need to do is say I’m sorry.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a “serial little one molester.”
One of the accusers, Scott Cross, stated in court docket that Hastert sexually abused him throughout his senior yr in highschool.
“I’ve all the time felt that what Coach Hastert had completed to me was my darkest secret,” Cross said.
When he was launched from jail, he was banned from being alone with kids or having pornography. His sentence additionally included two years of supervised launch and a $250,000 superb.
It was a shocking fall for a veteran politician who was as soon as probably the most highly effective individuals in Washington.
During his political profession, Hastert had talked up his time as a coach, saying it meshed with politics.
“Throughout his legislative profession, Speaker Hastert has drawn from his expertise as a former wrestling coach by emphasizing teambuilding and setting clear-cut, achievable targets,” stated a 2004 web archive of Hastert’s biographical webpage.
During Hastert’s time in Congress, he strongly supported the Iraq War and was a champion of then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts and a Medicare prescription drug invoice. The measure, passed in 2003, was sponsored by Hastert. It established an elective prescription drug profit program that took impact in 2006.
Hastert additionally grew to become the namesake of the unofficial “Hastert Rule,” which says the speaker ought to convey laws to the ground solely whether it is supported by “nearly all of the bulk.” That is, a speaker ought to name a invoice up for a vote provided that most of his or her caucus is in favor of passing it.
Hastert was preceded as House speaker by Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and succeeded by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Born in Aurora, Illinois, in 1942, Hastert attended Wheaton College, the place he earned a B.A. in economics, after which Northern Illinois University for a masters in schooling.
Before being elected to Congress in 1986, he was a member of the Illinois state House of Representatives. He was also a trainer, coach and corporate affairs proprietor.
Hastert was named Coach of the Year in 1976 by the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association. The identical yr, he served as president of the National Wrestling Conference, based on the IWCOA website. In 2016, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame revoked honors it had given to Hastert, who had been inducted to the corridor of fame in 2003.
In 2015, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had Hastert’s portrait faraway from a hallway within the Capitol. The elimination of the portrait — considered one of Ryan’s first acts as speaker — got here shortly after Hastert pleaded responsible.
