Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicted on federal charges

[nhboy]

Link

"Former U.S. Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert was charged Thursday with attempting to evade banks' reporting requirements and lying to the FBI about his actions.

He was charged with structuring a cash withdrawal of $952,000 so as to get around the rule that banks must report such transactions over $10,000. The charges also allege that he lied to the FBI about his actions.

Hastert, a Republican who represented Illinois' 14th Congressional District, was speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007. The indictment against him alleges that Hastert agreed in 2010 to provide someone with $3.5 million in order to "compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct" against that individual. He then allegedly withdrew about $1.7 million in cash from different accounts between 2010 and 2014 in order to provide the money to that person.

The indictment alleges that Hastert eventually began making his withdrawals in amounts less than $10,000 so as to avoid detection. And, when questioned about his activities, he then said that he was keeping the money, the indictment says.

The person to whom Hastert was doling out payments "has been a resident of Yorkville, Illinois" and has known the former speaker for most of his or her life, according to the indictment. Additionally, it says, that individual spoke with Hastert in 2010 about "past misconduct" that had occurred "years earlier." "

 

[Gilligan]

http://forums.somd.com/threads/300313-Hastert-what-no-gleeful-thread-from


No fitty cent for you, boy.

 

[nhboy]

Link

"While details of the relationship and Hastert's alleged wrongdoing were not provided, the indictment clearly indicated that Hastert's early career at Yorkville High School was material to the charges, Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor, told the Tribune.

"The feds don't put superfluous facts in an indictment," said Cramer, who is head of the Chicago division of the private security company Kroll. "If it's in there, it's relevant." "

 

[Gilligan]

Do you get half credit now?

 

[nhboy]

Link

"The indictment describes the person who allegedly received the payments only as a resident of Yorkville, Illinois, who has known Hastert most of the person's life.

The indictment does not indicate the age of the unidentified person, but it describes Hastert's time as a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville from 1965 to 1981 as "material" to the case, in addition to Hastert's time in Washington." "


Sound familiar?

 

[nhboy]

Link

In the realm of political payola scandals, $3.5 million is a lot of hush money, especially for a guy who’s out of public office and not especially high-profile in Beltway media circles these days. It seems a bit steep as a service charge to conceal your average vanilla marital infidelity, too; the Times report seems to imply that Hastert’s alleged misconduct is a little more flavorful than that:

One of the officials, who would not speak publicly about the federal charges in Chicago, said “Individual A,” as the person is described in Thursday’s federal indictment, was a man and that the alleged misconduct was unrelated to Hastert’s tenure in Congress. The actions date to Hastert’s time as a Yorkville, Ill., high school wrestling coach and teacher, the official said.

“It goes back a long way, back to then,” the source said. “It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office.” Thursday’s indictment described the misconduct “against Individual A” as having “occurred years earlier.”

Asked why Hastert was making the payments, the official said it was to conceal Hastert’s past relationship with the male. “It was sex,’’ the source said. The other official confirmed that the misconduct involved sexual abuse.

These may or may not be the same unnamed officials who told NBC News today that Hastert had definitely had a sexual relationship with a male student at Yorkville High.

Mind you, that’s a lot of anonymous sourcing, but it goes a long way toward explaining why prosecutors literally want to make a federal case out of the way Hastert withdrew his own money from personal accounts. And it adds color to some past reporting on Hastert’s tenure in Congress.

Hastert lost his leadership job in large part because of allegations he covered for Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who confessed a penchant for young male pages before resigning from office in disgrace in 2006.