Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who led the chamber longer than any other Republican before his reputation collapsed in a federal criminal case, has died at 84, FOX Local reported Monday.
The Kendall County Coroner’s Office in Illinois confirmed Hastert died at home over the weekend of natural causes.
From coach to speaker
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert taught high school and coached wrestling in Yorkville before entering politics. He was first elected to the House in 1986 to represent a suburban Chicago district and took office the following January.
He became speaker in 1999 after Newt Gingrich’s fall and kept the gavel for eight years, until Democrats won the House in the 2006 midterms and Nancy Pelosi succeeded him in January 2007. Hastert left Congress later that year. His tenure covered the impeachment aftermath of the Clinton years, the Sept. 11 attacks and much of the Iraq War debate.
The fall
In 2015, Hastert pleaded guilty to a federal charge of evading bank reporting requirements. Prosecutors said he had been withdrawing cash in ways designed to avoid scrutiny as part of an agreement to pay $3.5 million in hush money to conceal past sexual misconduct, the Justice Department alleged. He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison.
At least four former students accused Hastert of sexually abusing them between 1965 and 1981, while he worked at the Yorkville high school. Because the statute of limitations had run out, he was never charged with those crimes. At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin called him a “serial child molester,” a label that followed Hastert for the rest of his life.
Hastert’s story remains one of the starkest falls in modern Washington: second in line to the presidency for eight years, then a convicted felon publicly labeled an abuser. Funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Monday morning.
Photo: United States Congress, official 109th Congress portrait (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).