Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. Congress was indicted this week by a federal grand jury for lying to the FBI and paying millions of dollars in hush-money to cover up a yet-to-be-revealed past crime.
Since 2010, the indictment claims, Hastert paid a mysterious “Individual A” $3.5 million in several installments, starting in 2010, to “compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct.” To get this money, he moved around several bank accounts and inaccurately reported his assets to the IRS, all while working as a lobbyist in D.C. One of his banks tipped off federal investigator to his suspicious behavior.
When Hastert left Congress in 2007, he did so under a different ethics cloud. He was slammed by the House Ethics Committee for remaining “willfully ignorant” about sexual text messages and emails Florida Republican Mark Foley sent to underage interns during his Speaker-ship. It later came out that Hastert knew about the illegal behavior long before it went public.
Hastert, along with some of his colleagues, also took trips on private jets to golf resorts on the dime of a defense contractor. He also received more than $100,000 in donations from the clients of scandal-plagued lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and in return wrote to federal officials on behalf of those clients. He also claimed, falsely, that he never used military aircraft for “political travel.”
During his last years in office, Hastert was also found to be pushing for federal projects in his Illinois district that personally benefited his family.
Despite these problems, Hastert has been venerated by his party during his tenure in Congress and since his retirement.
House Speaker John Boehner has repeatedly invoked the so-called “Hastert Rule”: an unofficial policy that the Speaker can’t bring up a bill for a vote until it has the support of the majority of his or her caucus. Boehner has cited this rule to justify refusing to hold votes on everything from immigration reform to re-opening the shut-down government.
The Illinois House commissioned a $500,000 statue of him, a project that was shelved this year due to a budget crisis in the state, and may be permanently abandoned following these latest revelations of misconduct.