Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert leaves the federal courthouse in Chicago in June 2015.
Christian K. Lee/AP
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Christian K. Lee/AP
Dennis Hastert, whose political legacy as Congress’ longest-serving Republican House speaker was later tainted by allegations that he molested high school athletes during his earlier career as a teacher and wrestling coach, has died, a coroner said Monday. He was 84 years old.
Hastert, who was a speaker from 1999 to 2007, died Saturday of natural causes at his home while receiving hospice care, according to Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell.
When he was sentenced in 2016 to more than a year in prison, the former history professor became one of the highest-ranking U.S. politicians ever sentenced to prison.
In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known Illinois lawmaker whose reputation for friendliness helped him rise through the ranks of congressional leadership. When Newt Gingrich lost support due to ethics violations and the Republican Party’s poor performance in elections, Republicans elected Hastert to succeed him. In his first weeks in office, he presided over the House while the Senate conducted the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.
After the Republican Party won back the White House, Hastert helped pass then-President George W. Bush’s legislative agenda, including massive tax cuts and a measure that amounted to a huge expansion of prescription drug benefits – the biggest change to Medicare in decades.
His legacy was suddenly called into question in 2015, when he was accused of circumventing banking regulations in a scheme to pay hush money to cover up unspecified “prior misconduct.” Nearly a year later, prosecutors filed documents outlining what media reports had been suggesting for months: Hastert’s alleged misconduct involved sexual abuse of teenage boys on his wrestling team in the small town of Yorkville, west of Chicago.
During a 16-year coaching career, he led his team to a state championship and was named national coach of the year in 1976. But behind those accolades, prosecutors say, Hastert sexually abused at least four team members from 1965 to 1981.
The person Hastert was paying, identified in court documents only as Individual A, said the abuse happened in a motel room when he was 14, on his way home from a wrestling camp. Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after saying he would give them massages. Two wrestlers said Hastert performed sexual acts on them.
Prosecutors also described a recliner that Hastert often sat on in the locker room with a direct view of the stalls where the boys showered.
Hastert agreed to plead guilty to circumventing banking laws. In total, he paid more than $1.7 million of the $3.5 million he had promised to Individual A, sometimes in lump sums of $100,000 in cash.
At the sentencing hearing, in which he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, the judge, visibly angry, called Hastert a “serial child molester.” A former wrestler struggled with his emotions as he told the court his “dark secret” from his teenage years.
In his own statement, Hastert said he was “deeply ashamed” and admitted to “mistreating” some of his athletes. But he never spoke directly about sexual abuse.
The public knew nothing of Hastert’s past when Republicans lost their seats in the 1998 midterm elections.
Hastert’s path to the president’s office was cleared when Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, who was considered a lock to replace Gingrich as speaker, resigned after admitting to several extramarital affairs.
Hastert was aware of the personal pitfalls of being in a position of power.
“You know, in this business, especially in a job like this, you can put your head where it shouldn’t be,” Hastert said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “But you come home, and you’re home. You’re back where you’ve always been, and your feet are back on the ground.”
Hastert said he lacked the appetite for higher office.
As the recount of the 2000 presidential election dragged on, Hastert’s aides informed him of the possibility that he could become acting president in the event of a deadlock in the Electoral College.
“I really didn’t want to be president, temporary or otherwise,” he writes in his book. But he decided he would not give the job to the next constitutional officer if an impasse in the Electoral College extends beyond Inauguration Day. Ultimately, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision ended the recount and Bush assumed the White House.
Hastert’s journey to Congress from his childhood farm seemed to be the result of fate and luck.
In 1980, he finished third in an Illinois House primary. But the outgoing president became seriously ill, and GOP leaders chose Hastert to replace him on the November ballot, where he won in a traditional GOP stronghold.
Hastert became a candidate for Congress in 1986 and defeated the Democrat with 52% of the vote, his smallest margin of victory in a congressional race.
In Washington, Hastert quietly held House leadership, working closely with Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay after Republicans took control in 1995.
Hastert became wealthy largely through a complex web of transactions that coincided with one of his own road allotments increasing the value of the land he had purchased in his district.
He was forced to resign as speaker in 2007, when Democrats took control of the House, and he resigned his seat later that year.
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wheaton College in 1964 and a master’s degree in education from Northern Illinois University in 1967.
In 2007, Wheaton named its newly established public policy center the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy. After Hastert’s indictment, the school removed his name in 2015. Other organizations dropped their associations with Hastert, and his portrait was removed from a hallway outside the House chamber.
Hastert lived his entire life in the suburbs of Chicago, primarily in the Yorkville area. Growing up, he helped his father in the family food business.
Survivors include his wife, Jean, and two adult sons.
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