That is to say, MOTIVE, which is always relevant to enhance or minimize the impact of a convection.
If you are broke and your wife comes down with a potentially fatal cancer and you had no insurance, you might me moved to embezzle money for her care, relief of her pain and possibly to save her life. Embezzlement is still a crime. Your motive does not exonerate you BUT that motive would be a LOT less damaging than Hastert's desire to keep his seat in Congress and Speakership and power by using that power for personal gain and to obtain the cash to shut up his victims and keep his constituents in the dark as to just WHAT they had been bamboozled into electing to Congress.
Yes, that is a crime in Illinois and two former teachers at our local public indoctrination high school (one male and one female) are doing substantial time for it. Even in the absence of force, teachers taking such advantage of underage students are deemed RAPISTS.
That colossal level of blackmail is certainly a state felony. If the mail or e-mail was used on two instances by a perp, it can also be federally prosecuted as a RICO felony extortion.
The victim is not a hero but a felon but, under the circumstances, it is quite unlikely that a jury will be empaneled with a prosecutor attempting to convict the blackmailer for victimizing slime like Hastert. I don't weep for Hastert either. The end of the republic? Hastert is only one of all too many problems killing this republic. Life is short (particularly at my age and condition) and I am not going to attempt to write even a partial litany of the rest.
Hastert may have never been caught if he hadn’t agreed to pay so much hush money. Half that amount would have done and avoided the monitors.
Hastert’s irregular banking transactions came to the attention of the feds due to violations of reporting requirements. When asked about the transactions, Hastert told the feds that he was being “extorted” by someone claiming FALSE accusations of sexual abuse.
The FBI was called in and they recorded phone conversations between Hastert and the person who was receiving the payments. From those recorded conversations it became obvious to the FBI that Hastert, not the person who had been molested had INITIATED the idea of paying damages in exchange for silence. That’s hush money, not extortion or blackmail.
The idea of payoffs was Hastert’s not the other person’s. Hastert was also charged with lying to FBI agents.
There is a huge legal difference between “I’ll pay you to keep quiet about crimes that I committed” and “pay me or I will expose your crimes.” Hastert always had the option of simply saying, go ahead and file the report.
In a recorded call, the person Hastert was paying “said he understood his agreement with Hastert was a ‘private, personal matter’ and nobody else’s business. He offered to slow the payments down and asked about keeping their stories straight. He also reminded Hastert that he had wanted to bring in ‘two close confidants’ of Hastert’s to help them reach an agreement and that he also wanted to involve lawyers in the deal to make it ‘legal.’ Hastert had refused.”
For a more detailed explanation of what happened:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-dennis-hastert-fbi-investigation-met-20160428-story.html