Dennis Hastert, Ex-Speaker of House, Pleads Guilty
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CHICAGO
— J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, pleaded guilty on
Wednesday to trying to evade federal banking laws, telling a district
judge here that he had known what he was doing was wrong.
The
plea brought a quick, quiet finish to a proceeding that had startled
many in Washington who once knew Mr. Hastert as one of the nation’s most
powerful leaders, and in Yorkville, Ill., his rural hometown, who
remembered Mr. Hastert as their winning high school wrestling coach.
Prosecutors
said they believed that federal guidelines called for a sentence of up
to six months in prison. But the judge, Thomas M. Durkin of Federal
District Court, indicated that he would not decide on Mr. Hastert’s
punishment before reading a presentencing report. Sentencing was
scheduled for Feb. 29.
Mr.
Hastert told the judge why he had structured bank withdrawals in an
attempt to avoid detection. “I didn’t want them to know how I would
spend the money,” he said. Asked whether he understood at the time that
his conduct was wrong, he said yes.
As
part of the plea agreement, Mr. Hastert, 73, pleaded guilty to one of
the two federal charges against him in an indictment announced in May.
Each of those charges — structuring large bank withdrawals to avoid
detection and making false statements to federal investigators about
those withdrawals — carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison
and a $250,000 fine.
Dressed
in a dark suit and tie, Mr. Hastert arrived at the federal courthouse
more than an hour before his hearing was scheduled to begin. He made his
way through the public entrance, went through a security screening and
was escorted by several federal marshals past a line of TV cameras. He
did not pause to answer questions.
The
plea, which had been anticipated for weeks, allows Mr. Hastert to avoid
a lengthy trial where details of long-ago events threatened to emerge.
The guilty plea to a relatively technical-sounding violation seemed
harmless in comparison with the damaging suggestions raised by the
indictment and by some briefed on the investigation months ago.
The
indictment accused Mr. Hastert of structuring cash withdrawals totaling
$1.7 million in a way meant to avoid the notice of bank officials. Then
when federal authorities asked about the withdrawals, he lied about
them.
Prosecutors
said the money was being used to make up for past “misconduct” against a
person the indictment described only as “Individual A.” The indictment
said Mr. Hastert had eventually to pay $3.5 million to “compensate for
and conceal” that misconduct.
Details
were not addressed in court or in publicly filed legal documents, but
two people briefed on an F.B.I. inquiry said the money had gone toward
covering up claims of sexual misconduct with a male student decades ago.
Mr. Hastert was a coach and high school teacher from 1965 until 1981 in
Yorkville, about 60 miles west of here. Mr. Hastert was not charged
with sex crimes, which are covered by statutes of limitation. The former
student, who remains unidentified, did not come forward publicly.
“The
one thing this defendant clearly didn’t want to have was — essentially —
his day in court,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor
here who is not involved in this case. “He doesn’t want the reason for
the structuring to come out. It seems that he spent $1.7 million or so
to keep this secret, and his motivation now would seem to be keeping
that secret.”
In
Chicago, where corruption trials for public officials are painfully
common, Mr. Hastert was only the latest in a series of officials to
appear in this courthouse. Still, Dick Simpson, a political scientist
and former Chicago alderman whose analysis of convictions since 1976
suggests that this is the most corrupt metropolitan region in the United
States, said the remaining unknowns around Mr. Hastert’s case were
unusual.
In the case of Jesse L. Jackson Jr., the former Democratic representative who pleaded guilty
in 2013 to fraud, details were made public down to the campaign money
he spent on a fedora that once belonged to Michael Jackson, on stuffed
animals from Build-A-Bear and on an elk head from Montana. In the case
of Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor who is serving time in federal prison for corruption, recordings of his phone calls, in all their salty language, were played at his trial.
“Normally, you have to uncover the whole crime,” Mr. Simpson said.
For
Mr. Hastert, who already seemed to have faded in political memory by
the time of his indictment, the events were a puzzling coda to what had
been an unlikely political career. Mr. Hastert, born into a family that
ran a farm supply business, had been a small-town teacher before running
for the Illinois House of Representatives.
He
was elected to Congress in 1986, and suddenly found himself chosen as
speaker of the House in 1999 in a moment of crisis for his Republican Party.
Newt Gingrich had just stepped down, and the Republicans’ first choice
to replace him, Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, gave up the position
before he ever assumed it, acknowledging that he had carried on
adulterous affairs. In the end, Mr. Hastert, known as a conciliatory
leader who even some in Washington called “the coach,” was the
longest-serving Republican speaker. see more
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