https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/dennis-hastert-longtime-republican-house-speaker-prison-dies-137003116CHICAGO -- Dennis Hastert, the nation’s longest-serving Republican House speaker, who helped turn much of President George W. Bush’s agenda into law before his own political legacy was forever fouled by allegations that he molested high school athletes when he was a wrestling coach, died over the weekend, a coroner said Monday. He was 84.Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 until 2007, died of natural causes at his home, according to Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell.When he was sentenced in 2016 to more than a year behind bars, the former history teacher became one of the highest-ranking American politicians ever ordered to prison.In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known Illinois lawmaker with a reputation for congeniality that had helped him ascend the ranks of congressional leaders. When Newt Gingrich lost support because of ethics violations and the GOP’s poor showing in an election, Republicans elected Hastert to succeed him. In his first weeks on the job, he presided over the House while the Senate conducted Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.After the GOP reclaimed the White House, Hastert took much of what Bush proposed and steered it to passage, including massive tax cuts and a measure that amounted to a huge expansion of prescription drug benefits — the biggest change in Medicare in decades.
His legacy was suddenly thrown into doubt in 2015, when he was accused of evading banking regulations as part of a plan to pay hush money to conceal unspecified "prior misconduct." Nearly a year later, prosecutors filed papers that described what media reports had suggested for months: Hastert’s misconduct involved the 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 the accolades, prosecutors said, Hastert sexually abused at least four team members from 1965 to 1981.The person Hastert was paying, identified in court papers only as Individual A, said the abuse occurred in a motel room when he was 14 on the way home from wrestling camp. Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after saying he would give them massages. Two wrestlers said Hastert performed sex acts on them.Prosecutors also described a recliner where Hastert often sat in the locker room with a direct view of the stalls where the boys showered.Hastert agreed to plead guilty to evading banking laws. In all, he paid more than $1.7 million out of $3.5 million that he had promised to Individual A, sometimes in lump sums of $100,000 cash.At the sentencing hearing where he received 15 months behind bars, the visibly angry judge called Hastert a “serial child molester.” A former wrestler struggled with his emotions as he told the court about his “dark secret” from adolescence.In his own statement, Hastert said he was “deeply ashamed” and admitted that he "mistreated” some of his athletes. But he never referred directly to sexual abuse.
The public knew nothing about Hastert’s past when Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Hastert confronted Gingrich about dissatisfaction in the GOP ranks, saying it was unlikely Gingrich could hold his post, Hastert wrote in "Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics.""Well, I'll make them support me," he quoted Gingrich saying of the GOP rebels. Told that was unlikely, Gingrich asked Hastert what to do."Do what you have to do," he replied. The next day, Gingrich stepped down as speaker and left the House.Hastert’s path to the speaker’s office was cleared when Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, who was considered a lock to replace Gingrich as speaker, resigned after acknowledging several extramarital affairs.In January 1999, Hastert broke with tradition by delivering his acceptance speech from the House floor and by allowing Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, to briefly preside over the day's proceedings."Solutions to problems cannot be found in a pool of bitterness," Hastert said in his speech. "They can be found in an environment in which we trust one another's word, where we generate heat and passion, but where we recognize that each member is equally important to our overall mission of improving the life of the American people."Hastert was aware of the personal pitfalls of holding the powerful position."You know, in this business, especially in a job like this, you can get your head someplace where it shouldn't be," Hastert said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. "But you come back home, and you're home. You're back where you've always been, and your feet are back on the ground."He was generally viewed as a friendly, even-tempered lawmaker. His wrestling experience followed him to Washington, with GOP colleagues often calling him "coach.”Hastert said he lacked the appetite for higher office.
As the recount of the 2000 presidential election dragged on, Hastert’s aides briefed him on the possibility that he might become acting president in the event of an Electoral College deadlock."I really didn't want to be president, temporary or otherwise," he wrote in his book. But he decided that he would not pass the office to the constitutional officer next in line if an Electoral College deadlock extended beyond Inauguration Day. In the end, the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling ended the recount, and Bush moved into the White House.Hastert’s journey to Congress from his boyhood farm appeared to be the result of fate and luck.In 1980, he finished third in an Illinois House primary. But the incumbent became fatally ill, and GOP leaders chose Hastert to take his place on the November ballot, where he won in a traditional GOP stronghold.Hastert became a congressional candidate in 1986, when local Republican leaders put him on the primary ballot, replacing freshman Rep. John Grotberg, who was battling cancer. Hastert went on to beat the Democrat with 52 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory in a congressional race.In Washington, Hastert served quietly in House leadership, working closely with Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay after Republicans took control in 1995. Several years later, DeLay was the force driving Clinton’s impeachment and was simply too toxic to seek the speaker’s chair.Hastert’s tenure was marked by a shift of power from committee chairmen to GOP leaders, fealty to the Bush administration and an explosion of congressional pet projects known as earmarks. Democrats fumed that he weakened the ethics process that ensnared DeLay, who left Congress under a cloud of criminal charges in 2006.
Hastert became wealthy largely through a complex web of transactions that coincided with one of his own highway earmarks increasing the value of land he had purchased in his district.He was forced to step down as speaker in 2007, when Democrats gained control of the House, and he resigned his seat later that year. In 2008, he joined the Washington lobbying firm of Dickstein Shapiro as a senior adviser, specializing in government law and strategy.Born in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Wheaton College in 1964 and a master’s in education from Northern Illinois University in 1967.In 2007, Wheaton named its newly created 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 abandoned associations with Hastert, and his portrait was removed from a hallway outside the House chamber.Hastert lived his entire life in Chicago's suburbs, primarily in the Yorkville area. While growing up, he helped his father with the family feed business.Survivors include his wife, Jean, and two adult sons.
>>1541279From a more civilized time, when Republican politicians had the decency to hide and feel shame for their lust for children
>>1541289Or actually be prosecuted unlike today where they can rob and rape and they get voted into office.
>In Washington, Hastert served quietly in House leadership, working closely with Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay after Republicans took control in 1995. Several years later, DeLay was the force driving Clinton’s impeachment and was simply too toxic to seek the speaker’s chair.This part can't be understated. It was the transition from normal pedo republicans to the corrupt dealmaking Epstein class.
>>1541333Getting charged with a sex crime, a crime against a child, and especially a sex crime against children is considered a badge of honor in the modern Republican partyHastert just had the bad luck of being ahead of his time
>>1541358Precisely. Today Trump would put him in charge of the Department of Education.
>>1541279he was probably a nevertrumper RINO traitortrump would never
Grand Old Pedo party
>>1541558In fact the opposite was true. He was Mitch McConnell before Mitch got elected. He had one job: prevent Democrats from ever getting anything done. He was wildly successful at it and his style became the blueprint for future Republican leaders in Congress.
>>1541568If people are preventing Democrats from "getting stuff done" how have Democrats been fucking things up with their shitty policy for 30 years?
>>1541572They haven't. Thanks for playing, retard.
>>1541572fun fact: they haven't. Since Reagan, the GOP in Congress have prevented Democrats from getting almost everything done. Any legislation that finally got through only did so with the help of some Republicans. That includes Obama-care as well. He had help or he wouldn't even have got that crappy program through.I know your favorite news source wants to pretend that isn't so, but they are the same group who blame Democrats for Covid and the Vaccine ... forget all about Operation Warp Speed under Trump.I'm not saying your favorite news sources are always lying, just that they do not report the whole story. Liberal sources are generally the same. They report their half of the story.You can check all sources, especially if they quote original sources, or you can just turn a blind eye to half of the information you receive.
>>1541588I'm old enough to remember Mitch McConnell going on record in the midst of the 2008 recession and saying that his number one priority as Senate Minority Leader was making Obama a one term presidentThe modern Republican party is incapable of governing when in power and exists solely to be obstructionists when out of power, even to the detriment of the American peopleThey are nothing but a lead weight around America's neck
>>1541630>The modern Republican party is incapable of governing when in powerI mean, sure, if you totally ignore all the THRIVING red states and DYING blue states.
>>1541585>>1541588No, they have. I talk about the most serious fuck ups all the time. And those are just the federal fuck ups.
>>1541634>if you ignore all the imaginary statesyes?
>>1541661>Nooo the widely reported economic data isn't real
>its very widely reported data>...no, you can't see itMIGA hallucinates another win
>>1541661There's a few trashy states, most are filled with browns though. WV being the outlier, considering the government destroyed mining a few decades back, I'd say theyre dong OK.Tell me anon, which state is the best blue state to live in?
>>1541682>Sealioning
>>1541682pretending that esl shill is going to back up any of their arguments is a waste of time. the data they're referencing doesn't exist, and even if they post a link it'll probably just disprove their point. congratulations, you've won an argument with the local retard.
>>1541694>Samefagging >Sealioning
>>1541588>>1541630They do it because it works.>Republican jam through their main polices, like trickle down economics, which destroy the economy.>A Democratic president is voted in to clean up the mess>Republicans obstruct everything and claim the democratic president can't get anything done>American people agree with that and vote in another Republican president who continues to further destroy the country.I'd say the cycle would repeat, but the odds of trump staging another coup, with the republican's blessing again, because of the midterms is looking more and more likely.
>>1541719>It's posting fanfic again
>>1541728Trump and hegseth are already preparing to use the military to steal the electionhttps://www.rawstory.com/trump-midterms-2678007500/
>>1541755Good since Democrats are an existential threat to the US they should be classified as a terrorist organization.>You're kidding, right?Nope.
Someone got banned from reddit again
>>1541802We get it, you hate democracy, but that's expected of Russians
>>1541683Maryland is pretty good outside of Baltimore in most areas. Red county in a blue state is very comfy
>>1541728>that's a lie>>1541802>actually it's basedVranyo doesn't work on /news/, ESL shill
