Former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert Pleads Guilty on Federal Charges

[Admiral Yi]

Hush money/blackmail/extortion is not really corruption.  Or at all corruption.

[DGuller]

Hush money/blackmail/extortion is not really corruption.  Or at all corruption.

Yeah, this isn't about corruption, although legalized corruption does feature in it in the background.  How does an honest Congressman find millions to pay off to the students he was intimate with?  That's right, by joining a "lobbying firm" after his stint in Congress.  Nothing really to be indicted over, of course, since "lobbying firms" get a lot of say in deciding what kind of bribery is considered legal, but it's part of the story nonetheless.

[Razgovory]

Oh my. That is almost too juicy to be true.

I am skeptical that it is true.  I think there is a real possibility he was simply blackmailed and he knew that fighting the allegations would ruin him.

[Tonitrus]

If he ends up in jail, has there ever been a higher ranking office holder to do time? Nixon didn't do time, and the president is arguably the only higher ranking official than the speaker of the house.

Hastert and Delay were quite a pairing.

Jefferson Davis.

Former Senator and Secratary of War? I don't think that is quite the equal of a former Speaker of the House. Surely you're not counting the illegitimate office of President of the Confederacy?

Why not? 

[Razgovory]

Then we would have to put Emperor Norton the first as the highest ranking official jailed.

[Valmy]

What monster jailed poor Norton I? 

[Razgovory]

What monster jailed poor Norton I? 

Peace officer who dragged him for vagrancy.

[jimmy olsen]

Americans are scum!


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-dennis-hastert-status-hearing-met-20151014-story.html

It's Truly Amazing How Hypocritical and Dishonest America's Leaders Were in the 1990s

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert will plead guilty to charges related to allegations that he attempted to circumvent financial disclosure laws and lied to the FBI in the course of paying $1.7 million to an individual who was threatening to reveal that Hastert, a former Illinois high school teacher, had sexually abused him. The exact details of Hastert's plea deal have not yet been disclosed, but Politico reported Wednesday that the agreement would involve serving "possibly more than a year" of prison time. A judge scheduled Hastert's plea appearance for Oct. 28.

The federal indictment against Hastert said only that he had paid an "Invidual A" to cover up "past misconduct" against that person, but subsequent law enforcement leaks indicated that Individual A was a former male student of Hastert's and that the misconduct was sexual in nature. (It's believed that Illinois' statutes of limitations preclude Hastert from being prosecuted for the reported sexual crimes themselves.) A woman named Jolene Reinboldt also came forward in June to allege that her brother, who died in 1995, had been sexually abused by the former congressman as a student.

The apparent admission of guilt by Hastert underlines the almost unbelievable level of public and personal misconduct committed by the U.S. political leaders of the 1990s. Bill Clinton, of course, admitted to giving false deposition testimony (and lying a number of times in public) after being fellated in the Oval Office by a 22-year-old. Hastert took over as speaker from Newt Gingrich, who in 1997 had become the first speaker to be disciplined by the House for unethical behavior (he had claimed tax-exempt charitable status for a college class that was actually a training session for Republican activists and gave false information to investigators looking into the case). Gingrich, during the time that he was leading the move to impeach Clinton, was conducting an affair with the woman who would become his third wife.

Meanwhile, the congressman who led Clinton's impeachment prosecution, Henry Hyde, was revealed by Salon to have cheated on his wife with a married woman, breaking up the woman's marriage. And the representative who was initially in line to replace Gingrich as speaker, Bob Livingston, made way for Hastert by resigning from Congress because Hustler magazine was working on story about his own multiple extramarital affairs.

Also, a few years earlier the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee had gone to prison for fraud. And Dennis Hastert, it turns out, was probably worse than all of these guys! Quite a decade we had in the 1990s.

[Martinus]

A scandal involving a Republican, dirty money and sexual abuse of a male minor? That's almost unheard of.

[Martinus]

I also love how the article apparently equates marital infidelity with child abuse, by deeming all "personal misconduct". Catholic much?

Why would a politician cheating on his or her spouse even be an issue to anyone?

[Valmy]

I also love how the article apparently equates marital infidelity with child abuse, by deeming all "personal misconduct". Catholic much?

Why would a politician cheating on his or her spouse even be an issue to anyone?

See there was this blowjob in the oval office in the 90s...

[The Brain]

Why would a politician cheating on his or her spouse even be an issue to anyone?

Unclear. I don't think I've ever heard it reported in Sweden.

[jimmy olsen]

What a creepy son of a bitch.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/us/dennis-hastert-molested-at-least-four-boys-prosecutors-say.html?_r=1&referer=http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/04/09/prosecutors_detail_dennis_hastert_s_alleged_abuse_of_teenagers.html

Hastert Molested at Least Four Boys, Prosecutors Say

J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, after his arraignment in Chicago last June. Federal prosecutors on Friday provided details of sexual abuse allegations against him.

JOSHUA LOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
By MONICA DAVEY and MITCH SMITH
APRIL 8, 2016

CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors on Friday for the first time provided details of sexual abuse allegations against J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, asserting that he molested at least four boys, as young as 14, when he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades ago.

Mr. Hastert, 74, is not charged with abuse because of statutes of limitation, prosecutors said, but he was accused last year of illegally structuring bank withdrawals to pay one of his victims in an effort to hide the abuse. He pleaded guilty in October to the banking violation, and suffered a stroke in November while awaiting sentencing, set for April 27.

In a court filing late Friday, making suggestions for a judge who will decide Mr. Hastert's sentence, the prosecutors described specific, graphic incidents that they say occurred when Mr. Hastert was a popular, championship-winning coach in a small Illinois town in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The "known acts," the prosecutors said, consisted of "intentional touching of minors' groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor."

"The actions at the core of this case took place not on the defendant's national public stage but in his private one-on-one encounters in an empty locker room and a motel room with minors that violated the special trust between those young boys and their coach," the prosecutors wrote.

A lawyer for Mr. Hastert did not reply to a request for comment on the prosecution claims. In a court filing earlier this week, Mr. Hastert, who has stayed largely out of view since the charges emerged nearly a year ago, requested probation and said he was "profoundly sorry" for past conduct, though he did not specify those actions. On Friday, Mr. Hastert also filed under a seal a response to the government's pre-sentence investigation. A hearing is set for next week on whether his filing remains under seal.


According to the prosecutors, Mr. Hastert gave one boy, a 14-year-old freshman wrestler, a massage in the locker room, then performed an unspecified sex act on him. Another boy, Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995, was sexually abused by Mr. Hastert throughout high school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his sister and others told the prosecutors. A third boy, who was 17 and remembered Mr. Hastert sitting in a recliner-type chair with a direct view of the locker room shower stalls, said Mr. Hastert had told him that one way to make his wrestling weight was to get a massage, then performed a sexual act. And prosecutors said Mr. Hastert had massaged another boy's groin area after asking the boy to stay in his hotel room during a wrestling camp.

That incident became the center of the prosecution's case. It was also the reason that the allegations, which were never exposed during Mr. Hastert's eight years as the Republican speaker of the House, came to light. The boy, known in court documents as Individual A, confronted Mr. Hastert years later, around 2010, asked him why he had done what he did, and sought a settlement — beginning the payments that would be Mr. Hastert's downfall.

In late 2014, as law enforcement authorities were investigating unusually large withdrawals from Mr. Hastert's bank account, Mr. Hastert said that he was doing nothing unusual with his money — and that he simply did not trust banks. Not long after, his lawyer told the investigators a different story: The lawyer said that Mr. Hastert was paying large sums — and promising as much as $3.5 million, the authorities say — to Individual A because Individual A was extorting him for false allegations of abuse.


Document | Prosecutors Recommend Sentencing for Dennis Hastert Illinois prosecutors said they believed the former speaker of the House should face up to six months in prison.
After a series of recorded phone calls, with Mr. Hastert's cooperation, the investigators concluded that there was no extortion, but that Mr. Hastert was actually carrying out an agreed-to settlement for real abuse.

Even when Mr. Hastert told Individual A, as investigators listened in, that he needed more time to come up with more money, Individual A "did not make any threats" and even "expressed understanding," the prosecutors said. At another point, Individual A seemed agreeable, even empathetic, suggesting that they settle on smaller amounts and keep the payments as a "private, personal matter." Individual A even pushed Mr. Hastert to tell his wife about the payment agreement, and suggested that an outside lawyer or confidante might be called in.

Of the abuse of Individual A, prosecutors said there was "no ambiguity."

Prosecutors said the motel incident had happened during a trip to a wrestling camp, in which several other boys shared a room but where Individual A and Mr. Hastert spent the night together. Individual A told prosecutors he did not know why Mr. Hastert had singled him out.

The court filing says Mr. Hastert had the boy strip naked and lay on a bed under the guise of treating a groin pull, but it "became clear to Individual A that defendant was not touching him in a therapeutic manner to address a wrestling injury but was touching him in an inappropriate sexual way." The boy then ran across the room, confused and embarrassed, before Mr. Hastert asked him to get onto Mr. Hastert's back and to give the coach a massage. "Defendant lay on the bed in only his underwear, and Individual A gave him a back massage," the prosecutors said. "They then went to sleep in the same bed."

When Mr. Hastert was charged last year, the accusations rattled the town of Yorkville, Ill., about an hour west of here. Mr. Hastert, a Republican who served as House speaker from 1999 to 2007, was regarded as a hero by many in Yorkville, where he had taught high school. But prosecutors said Mr. Hastert's life had been "marred by stunning hypocrisy."

They alluded to a fifth boy from Mr. Hastert's days in Yorkville who recalled Coach Hastert brushing against his genitals during a massage at one point. But he said he was unsure whether the contact was intentional though he found it "very weird."

Of the boys, prosecutors said: "He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty and devoid of dignity. While defendant achieved great success, reaping all the benefits that went with it, these boys struggled, and all are still struggling now with what defendant did to them."

In the court filing, prosecutors said they believed Mr. Hastert should face up to six months in prison, as suggested under federal guidelines.

Prosecutors took note of Mr. Hastert's poor health, but said that Mr. Hastert could continue getting medical care in prison if needed.

Steven A. Block, an assistant United States Attorney, said that Mr. Hastert's sentencing judge should "balance the positive nature of defendant's public service with the need to avoid a public perception that the powerful are treated differently than ordinary citizens when facing sentencing for a serious crime."

[alfred russel]

Not sure why this isn't a really big story. The guy was speaker of the house.

[Eddie Teach]

Long time ago.