The Hastert Affair
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, 75, was exposed as a pedophile, who positioned a La-Z-Boy recliner in "direct view of the shower stalls in the locker room where he sat while the boys showered."
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Coach Dennis Hastert, a yearbook photo, NBC News. |
Speaker Hastert was a card carrying member of the political establishment elites. He was an Illinois Republican Congressman from 1987 to 2007, and the longest serving House Speaker, holding the position from 1999 to 2007.
Former Speaker Hastert’s personal fortune, estimated between $4 million and $17 million dollars, was built principally through real estate holdings and lobbying for Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, DC, where his clients included a tobacco company, energy companies, and transportation companies.
Former Speaker Hastert also resigned from the Chicago CME Group, which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.
One article in The Chicago Tribune noted that Hastert’s indictment required approval from the highest levels of the Department of Justice. The charges were concealed until just before they were announced.
Last year, 2016, saw former Speaker Hastert sentenced to 15 months in jail, a $250,000 fine, two years supervised release under treatment for sexual deviancy, and registration as a sexual offender.
His victim, just one of several, was 14 years old at the time that Hastert abused him in a hotel room ostensibly to "check a groin injury." Other victims were aged 14 and 17.
It is important to understand that Mr. Hastert’s sentence was for the financial crime of "structuring," committed as former Speaker Hastert attempted to pay $3.5 million in hush money to one of his accusers.
Initially, former Speaker Hastert withdrew $50,000 in 15 separate increments. After bank officials inquired into the withdrawals, he began withdrawing his funds in $9,000 increments, avoiding reporting requirements when $10,000 or more are withdrawn.
Between July 2012 and December 2014, former Speaker Hastert withdrew some $952,000 in cash in more than 100 separate transactions.
Former Speaker Hastert was then routinely interviewed by federal law enforcement officers after his bank reported the suspicious transactions.
Mr. Hastert lied to federal agents about the withdrawals, committing a felony. He said, “Yeah … I kept the cash. That’s what I’m doing.” He claimed that he just did not trust banks.
Then greed got the best of him, and former Speaker Hastert’s own lawyer alleged to investigators that one of his victims was “extorting him for false allegations of abuse.”
After investigators listened in to Hastert’s conversations with the victim, with his consent and collaboration, they concluded that no extortion was underway, and that he was carrying out an agreed upon settlement for acts of sexual abuse.
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Faces of pedophiles. They look like this. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. WikiPedia. |
This may be a good point to mention that former Speaker Hastert was allegedly and notoriously dirty, FBI agents had reams of evidence that he was complicit in a far broader range of crimes than ever rose into visibility.
Former FBI analyst and translator Sibel Edmonds wrote in September, 2015:
“Since 1996 the FBI has had tons of information on Hastert which was gathered in Chicago by the FBI’s Chicago Field Office. The incriminating criminal evidence in those files range from bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and embezzlement, to sexual crimes against minors and participation in foreign-operated drug operations.”
Ms. Edmonds continues:
“But that’s not all. The FBI also has had hard data on Hastert’s sexual violations outside the United States. The involved countries include Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey and Morocco, among others. This also included sexual favors as means of foreign bribery. Interestingly, the CIA has been documenting those sexual activities for many years, and not only on Hastert but on many others; elected and appointed.”
Ironically, the actual sexual offenses committed by former Speaker Hastert are outside their statute of limitations, and the judge in his case noted that punishment for acts of child sex abuse would have been far more harsh.
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Fall from grace. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is sentenced to prison. Fortune. |
Former Speaker Hastert avoided conviction for acts of sexual molestation committed against children, but he did not avoid the condemnation of history.
“If there’s a public shaming of the defendant because of the conduct he’s engaged in, so be it.” The judge in the case made it a point to describe former Speaker Hastert as a "serial child molester."
“The defendant is a serial child molester,” said Judge Thomas M. Durkin of Federal District Court in a tough rebuke of the former speaker before issuing his sentence.
The judge added, “Some actions can obliterate a lifetime of good works. Nothing is more stunning than having a “serial child molester” and “speaker of the House” in the same sentence.”
In court, former Speaker Hastert cut a pathetic image, struggling with multiple health issues. Judge Durkin said that Hastert would probably be sent to a prison hospital, as “This is not meant to be a death sentence.”
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Former House Speaker and pedophile Dennis Hastert can walk when it suits him. NPR. |
Former Speaker Hastert admitted abusing his athletes under questioning by Judge Durkin.
“You said you mistreated athletes. Did you sexually abuse Mr. Cross?” He asked.
Former Speaker Hastert grudgingly replied, “I don’t remember doing that, but I accept his statement.”
Then Judge Durkin asked him, “Did you sexually abuse Victim B?” Mr. Hastert paused, according to this account from The New York Times, and finally said “yes.”
Then Judge Durkin asked, “How about Mr. Reinboldt—did you sexually abuse him?” Mr. Hastert alibied, saying that it was a “different situation,” but he ultimately acknowledged committing the abuse.
Judge Durkin observed that former Speaker Hastert “manipulated” the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office, diverting their investigation and deliberately trying to “set up” the victim that he claimed was “extorting” him. He emphasized that former Speaker Hastert’s actions were “intentional, thought out and desperate.”
Perhaps the most grotesque aspect of the Hastert affair is the number of former lawmakers (and a one time Director of Central Intelligence) who wrote letters requesting clemency on his behalf: 41 members of the political and social establishment elites submitted letters to the court.
The writers included prominent individuals like former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, former Illinois Attorney General (the highest ranking law enforcement official in the state) Ty Fahner, former Illinois state Representative Doris Karpiel, retired Kendall County Sheriff Richard Randall, wrestling coach Leo Kocher from the University of Chicago, and Congressmen John T. Doolittle, David Dreier, Thomas Ewing, and Porter Goss, who was also DCI.
Mr. DeLay wrote, “We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few.” Talk about tone deaf. Mr. DeLay concluded, “He is a good man that loves the Lord.” We must wonder which “Lord” that Mr. Hastert worships.
Former AG Fahner wrote, "I urge the court to permit him (Hastert) to live the rest of his life in freedom with his family and friends, and all those who love and admire him," describing Former Speaker Hastert as a "kind, strong, principled, and unselfish man."
Former Speaker Hastert was booted from the Board of Advisors of the Wheaton College Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy, and his name removed from the former J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy.
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Former House Speaker and pedophile Dennis Hastert, released from federal prison. AP. |
Media in June 2017 reported that former Speaker Hastert, now 75, was prematurely released from the Rochester Federal Medical Center in Minnesota after serving just 13 months of his 15 month sentence, which I remind you was for the financial crime of “structuring,” not for child molestation and rape.
According to The Chicago Sun-Times, former Speaker Hastert is now under the supervision of a “residential re-entry management field office in Chicago, according to the Bureau of Prisons.”
The Times explained, “That means Hastert is likely at a halfway house in the region…or he is on home confinement.” Hastert’s “official release date from the federal prison system is set for August 16 (2017).”
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Faces of pedophiles. Pedophiles look like this. Former House Speaker and pedophile Dennis Hastert. Chicago Tribune. |
Sentencing judge, US District Judge Thomas M. Durkin also ordered former Speaker Hastert to spend 2 years on supervised release, granting him 3 days to report to a probation office. Judge Durkin also ordered former Speaker Hastert to participate in a sex offender treatment program.
Before Hastert’s release, however, yet another accuser broke cover and filed a lawsuit against Hastert and Yorkville Community Unit School District 115 alleging battery, negligent infliction of emotional distress and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The accuser stated that in 1973 or 1974, when he was 9 or 10, in the 4th grade, he stopped by the Game Farm Building to use the bathroom after riding his bike along Game Farm Road.
“The accuser entered the bathroom and, while sitting on the toilet in a stall, heard a male voice mutter something outside the stall door….The stall door opened, and he alleges he was sodomized.”
After recognizing then coach Hastert in the gym at Yorkville Grade School, the victim alleges that Hastert took “him by the neck into the hallway….The man dropped to his knees and asked the boy if he told anyone about the sexual assault."
"The boy, crying, said he hadn’t. The man warned the accuser against reporting the attack and threatened that since his father was the sheriff, he could put the boy’s parents in jail if he said anything.”
The lawsuit enters Twilight Zone dimensions when it reports that in 1984 or 1985, a decade after the assault, “the accuser visited the Kendall County State’s Attorney’s office to report the crime….He spoke with a longtime friend and political mentor to Hastert.”
“Upon hearing the accuser’s story, a man there allegedly threatened to charge the accuser with a crime and accused him of slandering Hastert’s name.”
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Links in order of precedence.
This is my 20th installment on the pedophilia epidemic.
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