Dennis Hastert, Longest-Serving Republican House Speaker, Dies at 84 After Prison Term
The former Illinois congressman died Saturday at his Plano home while in hospice care. His career ended in a hush-money case that exposed decades-old sexual abuse of teenage boys.
Dennis Hastert, the Illinois Republican who served as speaker of the House longer than any other Republican and later became the highest-ranking U.S. official to serve time in prison, has died. He was 84.
Hastert died of natural causes on Saturday at his home in Plano, Illinois, where he was receiving hospice care, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. His death became public Monday.
A former high school teacher and wrestling coach from Yorkville, Hastert rose through the Illinois House of Representatives to Congress. He became speaker in 1999 and held the gavel until 2007. His eight years made him the longest-serving Republican speaker in history. He was a central figure in advancing President George W. Bush's legislative agenda, including the tax cuts and the response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
His career came apart in 2015, when he was indicted on charges tied to structuring bank withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements. Prosecutors said he was trying to pay hush money to a person from his past. He pleaded guilty to the financial charge. At sentencing in 2016, court filings and statements revealed that Hastert had sexually abused teenage boys in the 1970s while he was a teacher and coach at Yorkville High School.
Judge Thomas Durkin called him a "serial child molester" and sentenced him to 15 months in federal prison. Hastert was released in June 2017. Because the statute of limitations had expired, he could not be prosecuted for the abuse itself. Illinois later eliminated the statute of limitations for child sex abuse crimes, a change that supporters said was driven in part by the Hastert case.
Jolene Burdge, whose brother Steven Reinboldt was among the people Hastert abused and who died in 1995, has said she thinks of him every day. She told the Sun-Times of mixed feelings about Hastert's death and the pain his actions caused.
His eight years in the chair included the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and the passage of Bush-era tax cuts. He left Congress in 2007.
Hastert's fall was among the most striking in modern congressional history. He was the second person in the line of presidential succession when he held the gavel, and he left Washington in 2007 as one of the most powerful Republicans in the country. Within a decade he was a convicted felon. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.
