Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert departs the federal courthouse, in Chicago, 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 fouled by allegations that he had molested high school athletes during his prior career as a teacher and wrestling coach, has died, a coroner said Monday. He was 84.
Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 until 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 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 then-President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
After the GOP reclaimed 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 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 alleged 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 sexual 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’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.
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.”
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 and beat the Democrat with 52% 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.
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.
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.
This story originally appeared on NPR
