Dennis Hastert, Longest-Serving GOP House Speaker, Dies at 84 After 15-Month Prison Term
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 5
Dennis Hastert, Longest-Serving GOP House Speaker, Dies at 84 After 15-Month Prison Term
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 5
Summary
Dennis Hastert died at 84 at his Illinois home while under hospice care, with the Kendall County coroner’s office notified Saturday evening.
Hastert’s political legacy had been shattered in 2016, when he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for banking-law violations tied to secret payments meant to conceal sexual misconduct.
At that sentencing, Hastert admitted abusing teenage wrestlers as young as 14 while coaching at Yorkville High School from 1965 to 1981, and the judge called him “a serial child molester.”
The former Illinois congressman had once risen from relative obscurity to become the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House before retreating from public life after his 2017 release from prison.