Dennis Hastert, a once-obscure Illinois member of Congress who rose to become the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House before falling from grace in a sex abuse scandal that came to light after he left government, has died. He was 84.

The coroner’s office in Kendall County, Illinois, was notified of Hastert’s death Saturday evening, according to a statement. He was pronounced dead at his home while under hospice care, the coroner said.

Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in April 2016 for violating federal banking laws, having made millions of dollars in secret payments to cover up sexual misconduct with a male student. He was released in July 2017.

Hastert Admits to Sexually Abusing Wrestlers

Hastert admitted at his sentencing that he sexually abused teenage wrestlers as young as 14 whom he coached at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Illinois, where he worked from 1965 to 1981.

It was a stunning downfall for Hastert, who had emerged as a surprise consensus choice for speaker in 1998 during a period of partisan uproar over the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

He held the post during the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, working closely with President George W. Bush in pushing a tough anti-terror agenda and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also forced through an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drug costs. But the way that vote was handled contributed to an ethical cloud that gathered over House Republicans in the Hastert era.

Hastert lost the speakership after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 midterm elections.

Hastert chose not to seek a Republican leadership role after the repudiation of his party in 2006. He left Congress in November 2007 to pursue a lucrative lobbying and consulting career.

John Dennis Hastert was born Jan. 2, 1942, in Aurora, Illinois, to Jack and Naomi Hastert. He worked at his family’s farm supply store from an early age, becoming active in 4-H in the heavily Republican area while wrestling and playing football in high school.

After graduating from conservative Wheaton College, he became a teacher and coach in Yorkville, about 45 miles west of Chicago, where he met his wife, Jean Kahl, a physical education teacher. In 1976, his small-town wrestling team won a state championship and he was named Illinois coach of the year.

Entered Politics in 1980

In his first run for a state House seat in 1980, Hastert finished third in the Republican primary. But he later won the seat when the incumbent had a stroke and had to be replaced on the ballot. He moved up to representing the Fox River Valley region in Congress in 1986 when the one-term incumbent contracted cancer and also needed to be replaced on the ballot.

As speaker, Hastert believed that Republicans should not advance any legislation unless a majority of their members supported the bill, even if measures could pass with a combination of Republican and Democratic votes. That informal policy came to be known as the Hastert rule.

Hastert’s alma mater Wheaton College had established the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy but removed his name from the center after the federal charges were lodged.

Paid Out Hush Money

Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to withdrawing $952,000 from his accounts at four banks in at least 106 separate transactions that he kept small enough to allow him to evade reporting requirements. Hastert said he gave the money to a person identified only as “Individual A” as part of a $3.5 million deal between them “to compensate for and keep confidential his prior misconduct against Individual A.”

“I want to apologize to the boys I mistreated when I was their coach,” Hastert said at his sentencing in 2016. “What I did was wrong and I regret it.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Carl Hulse/Joshua Lott
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