Dennis Hastert, former speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, has died

J. Dennis Hastert rose from a rural high school wrestling coach to the heights of power as the longest-serving Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives before an ignominious fall and imprisonment amid revelations that he sexually abused young people he coached.

Once the nation’s third-most powerful elected official, Speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007, Hastert died Sunday of natural causes at his Plano home while being treated in hospice care, Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell said. He was 84 years old.

His death came ten years after he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for illegally structuring $950,000 in bank withdrawals to evade federal reporting requirements. The money was intended for discreet payments to one of his victims, identified in court only as Individual A.

Hastert’s admission in court that he sexually abused several boys he coached on the Yorkville High School wrestling team in the 1960s and 1970s left him living a life largely “isolated from society,” one of his attorneys said. Friends who had encouraged his rise in national politics and celebrated him as a local hero shunned him.

It was a stunning fall for a politician of all parties in Illinois, where many colleagues knew him not as “Mr. President” but as “Denny” or simply “Coach.”

For the family of one of his victims, his death brought little relief.

“I thought I would feel more relief and some kind of closure, and that’s what I do, but nothing changes the fact that I lost my brother and I believe he had a lot to do with that,” said Jolene Burdge, whose brother, Stephen Reinboldt, told her that Hastert abused him throughout high school. Reinboldt died years before the allegations against Hastert became public.

The political career of John Dennis Hastert III is another example of the important role timing plays in politics.

After serving as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in the mid-1960s, he led the team to a state title in 1976 and earned coach of the year honors. In 1980, he ran for the Illinois House and finished third in a Republican primary against state Rep. Al Schoeberlein. But months later, Schoeberlein became terminally ill, and local party leaders chose Hastert to replace him on the ballot.

Six years later, similar circumstances occurred when U.S. Representative John Grotberg, who had often battled cancer, became incapacitated around the time of the primary election. Hastert’s supporters helped organize his nomination from among 12 candidates, and he headed to Congress.

A conservative with a strong Christian background stemming from his student years at Wheaton College, Hastert opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion. But as chief deputy whip, he was known for bridging differences between conservative and moderate factions of the GOP.

This skill proved valuable in 1998, when House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned after the Republicans’ disappointing defeat in the midterm elections. In mid-December, President-elect Robert Livingston of Louisiana spoke out and made a surprise announcement that he was stepping down after revelations about his extramarital affairs became public.

Within hours, Hastert received enough Republican votes to win the job and was nicknamed “the accidental speaker.”

As president, Hastert strongly supported President George W. Bush’s domestic and foreign agendas. In 2004, he formalized what became known as the Hastert rule, under which only legislation supported by a majority of House Republicans would get a floor vote.

He was also a strong supporter of “earmarks”, federal projects sought by individual members and often derided by critics as “pork barrel” spending. The Washington Post found that between 1999 and May 2005, Hastert awarded $24 million in grants to groups in Aurora, his hometown.

Perhaps its most notable investment was $207 million to start the 37-mile Prairie Parkway project that created a north-south highway connecting Interstates 88 and 80 in the far west suburbs. Hastert never revealed that the construction of the highway would benefit from a land investment he and his wife had made. A few months after Bush signed the 2005 highway bill, a land sale netted the Hasterts nearly $2 million, but the speaker denied any wrongdoing.

Federal funding for the project, which local residents opposed, was canceled in 2012. In 2018, the Illinois Department of Transportation abolished a protection corridor that had been established for this purpose.

After Republicans lost the House in the 2006 midterm elections, Hastert resigned from GOP leadership and later resigned his seat in November 2007 to become a consultant and powerhouse lobbyist.

Five years later, the FBI began investigating Hastert and large cash withdrawals he was making from local banks amounting to just under $10,000, the threshold that triggers reports to federal regulators.

At first, federal investigators said Hastert told them he didn’t trust banks, then that he was the victim of an extortion scheme — lies that led to his prosecution.

Agents then learned that he had sexually assaulted young people he was coaching, including Scott Cross, the brother of former Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross. Tom Cross had been a protégé of Hastert and a member of his political operation.

Hastert was indicted in May 2015 by a federal grand jury. After a plea deal, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin sentenced him in April 2016 to 15 months in prison, repeatedly calling him a “serial child molester.”

“Nothing is more astonishing than having the words ‘serial child molester’ and ‘Speaker of the House’ in the same sentence,” Durkin said.

In total, five former students have come forward to accuse Hastert of sexual abuse. Prosecutors said the abuse occurred in empty locker rooms and motel rooms during summer wrestling trips, often implied by Hastert offering a massage. The victims also told authorities that Hastert would sit in a reclining chair after practice and watch the boys shower.

Hastert showed up at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, on June 22, 2016, a little more than a year after his indictment. He served about 13 months of his 15-month sentence before being placed on probation. Because Hastert admitted to abusing boys as a wrestling coach, a judge also ordered him to participate in a sex offender treatment program, including any “psychological and physiological testing” recommended by his probation officer.

In 2021, years after Hastert’s release, a lawsuit filed by the man who was supposed to receive a total of $3.5 million in secret payments was settled in Kendall County Court, just days before his scheduled trial date. The terms of the settlement were never made public and Individual A was never identified in court.

Hastert’s portrait in the United States Capitol was removed from display and sent to storage. The National Wrestling Hall of Fame removed him from his position in 2016. Wheaton College removed his name from its public policy center, which still houses the congressional documents he donated.

Reinboldt, the wrestling team’s longtime student equipment manager until his graduation in 1971, died of AIDS in 1995 at age 42.

Burdge, his younger sister, who lives in Billings, Mont., said her brother told her that Hastert mistreated him “all through high school.” According to a court filing, three other people later came forward to say Reinboldt had also confided the abuse to them.

At Hastert’s 2016 sentencing hearing, Burdge testified that his brother had spent years “running from the pain and turmoil” caused by Hastert’s abuse and that he was afraid to speak out because he thought no one would believe him.

In an interview with the Tribune on Monday, Burdge said the news of Hastert’s death left her surprisingly emotional, and she cried all day thinking about her brother and how Hastert’s actions had ruined his life. She thinks of her brother often, she says, and Hastert’s death puts an end to this sad saga.

“I believe in forgiveness, but there are days when it’s really hard,” she said. “But I have to try to believe in my faith and trust that the Lord has it. I feel bad for (Hastert’s) family. I feel bad for the town, but no one is responsible for this but him.”