Politician accused of paying and hiding hush money
Hastert evaded banking laws, indictment says
CHICAGO — Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep a person from the town where he was a high school teacher silent about “prior misconduct” by the Illinois Republican, who was once second in line to the U.S. presidency, according to a federal grand jury indictment handed down Thursday.
The indictment, which doesn’t describe the alleged misconduct by Hastert, charges the 73-year-old with one count of evading bank regulations by withdrawing $952,000 in increments of less than $10,000 to skirt reporting requirements. He is also charged with one count of lying to the FBI about the reason for the unusual withdrawals.
Each count of the indictment carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Hastert, who had worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., since shortly after he left Congress in 2007, resigned from Dickstein Shapiro LLC, a spokesman for the lobbying and law firm said Thursday.
The indictment alleges Hastert withdrew a total of about $1.7 million in cash from various bank accounts from 2010 to 2014, then provided the money to a person identified in the indictment only as “Individual A.” Hastert allegedly agreed to pay the person $3.5 million, but never apparently paid that full amount.
It notes that Hastert was a high school teacher and coach from 1965 to 1981 in suburban Yorkville, west of Chicago. While the indictment says Individual A has been a resident of Yorkville and has known Hastert most of Individual A’s life, it doesn’t describe their relationship.
The indictment says Hastert agreed to the payments after multiple meetings in 2010. It says that “during at least one of the meetings, Individual A and defendant discussed past misconduct by defendant against Individual A that had occurred years earlier.”