Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison
Mother Jones
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Calling Dennis Hastert a “serial child molester,” a federal judge in Chicago today sentenced the former Republican House speaker to 15 months in prison, fined him $250,000, and ordered him to participate in a sex offender program.
Last year, Hastert pleaded guilty to a felony charge for violating federal banking laws designed to combat money laundering. The charge was related to his payment of hush money to cover up alleged sexual misconduct during his days as a gym teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois. As part of Hastert’s plea agreement, another charge for lying to the FBI about his cash withdrawals was dropped. Hastert’s plea agreement had initially suggested he could end up with six months in prison, but Judge Thomas Durkin went beyond the sentencing recommendation after a lengthy exposition on Hastert’s child sexual abuse history.
A federal grand jury indicted Hastert last May for allegedly lying to the FBI after investigators questioned him about $1.7 million in withdrawals he made that violated federal reporting requirements that guard against money laundering. The indictment alleged that Hastert was using the cash to secretly pay off “Individual A,” a man believed to be a former student at Yorkville during the time Hastert taught there, between 1965 and 1981. According to the indictment, at one point in 2014 Hastert was delivering as much as $100,000 a month to the individual in question, whom he’d promised to pay $3.5 million to prevent the man from publicly disclosing Hastert’s past alleged sexual abuse. The scheme described in the indictment is perhaps one of the most unsophisticated Washington cover-ups in recent memory. When the FBI asked Hastert about the withdrawals, he claimed he just didn’t trust the American banking system—a strange excuse for a former member of Congress turned Washington lobbyist.
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Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison
