Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused of hiding sex abuse of former student

[GMDino]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hastert-misconduct-20150529-story.html

Quote:On Friday, federal law enforcement officials said Hastert had paid $1.7 million over the last four years to conceal sexual abuse against a former male student he knew during his days as a teacher in Yorkville, Ill., where Hastert worked until 1981.

A top federal law enforcement official, who would not be identified speaking about the ongoing federal case, said investigators also spoke with a second man who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the former student said. The second person was not being paid by Hastert, the official said.

The disclosures followed Thursday's federal indictment against Hastert on charges of lying to the FBI about the reasons for large cash withdrawals he is accused of making to buy the man's silence.

“It goes back a long way, back to then,” a second official said. “It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office.”

Thursday's indictment described misconduct against a person identified only as “Individual A,” noting that Hastert had known the person “most of Individual A's life.”

When asked about the nature of the alleged misconduct, the second official said, “It was sex.”

Hastert has not responded to requests for comment. A representative of the lobbying and law firm where he had worked, Dickstein Shapiro, declined to comment.

The indictment alleged Hastert had agreed to pay a total of $3.5 million to “compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct.”

He made several cash payments beginning in 2010, after being contacted by the individual, the indictment said.

Hastert allegedly began by withdrawing $50,000 at a time, but when the
activity was questioned by banking officials, he reduced the withdrawals to under $10,000, the indictment said.

That caught the attention of financial regulators, who suspected Hastert was trying to evade federal reporting requirements.

Concerned that Hastert might be the victim of criminal extortion arising from his government work or involved in some illegal activity, FBI agents asked the former speaker about the withdrawals. Hastert told the agents that he distrusted banks and still had the cash in his possession, according to the indictment.

Somewhat ironically he was caught thanks to resources created by his support of the PATRIOT Act.

Quote:On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.

Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.

Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later.

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced Hastert's indictment for agreeing to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep someone quiet about his “prior misconduct.” The indictment accuses Hastert of structuring bank withdrawals to avoid bank reporting requirements, and lying to the FBI about the nature of the withdrawals. It does not reveal the “misconduct” that Hastert was trying to conceal. The recipient of the money was a resident of Yorkville, Illinois, where Hastert taught high school and coached wrestling from 1965 to 1981.

The indictment suggests that law enforcement officials relied on the Patriot Act’s expansion of bank reporting requirements to snare Hastert. As the IRS notes, “the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 increased the scope” of cash reporting laws “to help trace funds used for terrorism.” The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which was amended by the Patriot Act, had already required banks to report suspicious transactions.

But, by far, my favorite comment on this come from here:

Quote:If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

Yikes.

Yikes indeed.