Dennis Hastert, longest-serving Republican House speaker, dies at 84

Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker of the U.S. House and the highest-ranking elected official in American history to serve a prison sentence, died at his home in Plano, Illinois, on Oct. 3 at the age of 84.

The Kendall County Coroner's Office said it was notified of the death at about 10 p.m. on Oct. 3 and that Hastert, a resident of Plano, was pronounced dead at his residence while under hospice care. After a review of the circumstances and consultation with hospice personnel, the office said, the case did not meet the criteria for coroner jurisdiction and was released to the attending hospice physician.

Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to violating federal banking laws by structuring cash withdrawals to conceal hush-money payments to a man he had sexually abused as a teenager, NBC News reported. He was sentenced the following April to 15 months in prison and was never charged with a sex offense.

What the plea covered

The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service began investigating Hastert in 2013 on suspicion that he was illegally structuring bank transactions, the Daily Caller reported, and the withdrawals turned out to be going to one of his victims. He first told investigators the transactions were nothing unusual, then said through his lawyer that he was the target of an extortion attempt by someone falsely accusing him of sexual abuse, KSL-TV reported.

The payments grew out of a secret agreement to pay $3.5 million to a former wrestler who, decades later, confronted Hastert about being abused in his hotel room during a wrestling camp, KSL-TV reported. Hastert paid $1.7 million of that between 2010 and 2014, according to Shaw Local News Network.

A former Yorkville High School wrestler sued Hastert in April 2016 for the remaining $1.8 million of the $3.5 million he said he had been promised, Shaw Local reported. Hastert countersued, alleging the man had violated their confidentiality agreement by speaking with federal prosecutors about the abuse, and sought to recover the $1.7 million already paid. The case was settled on confidential terms in September 2021, days before trial.

A second lawsuit, filed in May 2016 by a man who said Hastert had assaulted him in a Yorkville community building when he was in the fourth grade, was dismissed in 2017 because the statute of limitations had run.

Fifteen months and an apology

Hastert was 74 and in a wheelchair after a stroke when he appeared for sentencing in April 2016. "The defendant is a serial child molester," U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin said. Durkin also ordered him into a sex offender treatment program and to pay $250,000 to a victims' fund, KSL-TV reported.

I want to apologize to the boys I mistreated when I was their coach.

The hearing was the first time Hastert publicly admitted that he had sexually abused some of the boys he coached, Shaw Local reported; he told the court he was "deeply ashamed" and that he alone was responsible, according to NBC News.

Prosecutors said Hastert abused at least four boys, ages 14 to 17, in the 1970s, describing conduct that included what they called "intentional touching of minors' groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor."

He served 13 months of the 15-month term, leaving a prison hospital several weeks ahead of schedule in 2017, according to NBC News, and returned to Kendall County.

The men who came forward

Hastert was never prosecuted for the abuse because the offenses were decades old and the statutes of limitation then in force had expired. Partly inspired by that, Illinois removed the statute of limitations for all felony child abuse and sexual assault offenses in 2017, Shaw Local reported, and extended the change to adult victims in 2019.

Scott Cross, a former wrestler, told the court that Hastert sexually abused him during his senior year in high school, NBC News reported. The sister of another victim told Hastert in court not to be a coward and to tell the truth, saying what he had done was not misconduct but the sexual abuse of a minor, according to KSL-TV.

I've always felt that what Coach Hastert had done to me was my darkest secret

Wheaton College, his alma mater, removed his name in 2015 from the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy, which it had inaugurated in 2007, and the Kendall County Courthouse took down a ceremonial plaque listing his accomplishments, Shaw Local reported. His portrait was removed from the U.S. Capitol, according to KSL-TV.

Coach Hastert at Yorkville

Hastert was employed at Yorkville High School from 1965 to 1981 as a teacher and wrestling coach, and he took the Foxes to a state wrestling title in 1976. After his indictment in May 2015, Yorkville School District 115 said it had no knowledge of the alleged misconduct and first learned of it when the indictment was released, Shaw Local reported.

The accidental speaker

Hastert was not his party's first choice, and some came to call him the accidental speaker, ABC7 Chicago reported. Newt Gingrich stepped down three days after the 1998 elections, as House Republicans moved toward impeaching President Bill Clinton over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and Gingrich's designated successor, Bob Livingston of Louisiana, resigned after acknowledging extramarital affairs of his own, according to KSL-TV.

House Republicans turned to Hastert, a self-described born-again Christian who was seen at the time as untainted by scandal and who had called Clinton's affair immoral. He took the gavel in January 1999, second in the line of succession to the presidency, and in 2006 passed Joseph Cannon as the longest-serving Republican speaker.

As speaker he pushed through George W. Bush's domestic and foreign policy, including the Iraq War, and declined to bring legislation to the floor unless it had the support of a majority of Republicans, a practice that became known as the Hastert Rule, ABC7 Chicago reported. He marshaled his own often fractious members to pass conservative bills with little or no outreach to the Democratic minority, according to KSL-TV.

From a farm near Aurora

John Dennis Hastert was born on Jan. 2, 1942, in Aurora, Illinois, and grew up on a family farm. He attended Oswego High School and received a deferment during the Vietnam War because of a wrestling injury. He served in the Illinois House from 1981 to 1987 and was elected to Congress in 1986, representing the 14th District, a seat now held by Naperville Democrat Lauren Underwood.

In Springfield, Hastert helped keep the Equal Rights Amendment from ever reaching a floor vote and opposed bills barring discrimination against gay people, Shaw Local reported, citing the Chicago Tribune. In Washington, one of his first assignments for Republicans was helping block President Bill Clinton's 1993 health care plan. He voted against abortion rights.

The first crack in his leadership came when he responded slowly to a fellow Republican's involvement with an underage House page, ABC7 Chicago reported. He left on his own terms all the same, giving up the gavel in 2007 after Democrats won the majority. Nancy Pelosi succeeded him.

Hastert resigned his seat on Nov. 26, 2007, and went to work as a lobbyist and consultant, according to the Daily Caller. Prosecutors said that three years after he left Congress he began meeting with the man they identified only as Individual A, ABC7 Chicago reported.

The coroner's office said no further information about his death was available for release.