Posted on 05/29/2015 12:21:39 PM PDT by Red Badger
What We Know So Far
Hastert, the former Speaker of the House, was indicted Thursday on federal charges of evading reporting requirements and lying to the FBI The Illinois Republican allegedly agreed to pay an unnamed individual $3.5 million for previous misconduct
Source: Investigators considered including a second alleged victim in the Hastert indictment, but ultimately chose not to do so.
A source familiar with the investigation told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon considered but did not pursue additional charges against former Speaker Dennis Hastert, which would have included a reference to an Individual B, one of potentially several alleged victims of “prior misdeeds.”
According to this source, no additional charges are expected to be filed against Hastert at this point.
The Department of Justice had no comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois didn’t respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for representing Hastert in another pending legal matter didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Hastert reportedly paid a person from his past to conceal sexual misconduct, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Times reported:
Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was paying an individual from his past to conceal sexual misconduct, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
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.
Posted at 12:45 p.m., May. 29 The Yorkville school district said Friday that officials there had “no knowledge of Mr. Hastert’s alleged misconduct” before Thursday.
Here’s the full statement:
Yorkville Community Unit School District #115 employed Mr. Dennis Hastert from 1965-1981. The District was first made aware of any concerns regarding Mr. Hastert when the federal indictment was released on May 28, 2015.
Yorkville Community Unit School District #115 has no knowledge of Mr. Hastert’s alleged misconduct, nor has any individual contacted the District to report any such misconduct. If requested to do so, the District plans to cooperate fully with the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into this matter.
Hastert, left, in 1975 as a wrestling coach. The Pantagraph
Former colleagues described Hastert as a “straight arrow” who was more focused on coaching wrestling than classroom teaching.
BuzzFeed News spoke with Maria Steiner, a teacher who taught French and Spanish at Yorktown High School from 1976 to 1980. Reached at her home in Ponte Verdra Beach, Florida, Thursday night, Steiner recalled Hastert as a dedicated wrestling coach who gave his teaching responsibilities less than his full attention.
“He was just the kind of teacher that would drive me crazy,” she said. “He would show movies in his class while he worked on wrestling stuff. He was kind of a slacker teacher.”
But, Steiner added, Hastert “was big in wrestling and that was big in Yorkville, Illinois.”
Hastert’s assistant wrestling coach, Anthony Houle, described as “straight arrow.”
“He was a straight arrow, nothing was hidden,” Houle told BuzzFeed News. “It was a small town, if you farted it was going to be big news.”
Sources: U.S. Attorney agreed to withhold details of Hastert’s alleged “misconduct” in indictment
WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon agreed to withhold details of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s alleged “prior misconduct” against an unidentified individual as part of an indictment against the Illinois Republican, two sources familiar with the case told BuzzFeed News.
Fardon announced the indictment — which charges that Hastert illegally evaded reporting transfers of large sums of money and of lying to the FBI — Thursday afternoon. Although the indictment says Hastert agreed to pay “Individual A” $3.5 million” in order to compensate for and conceal “prior misconduct” it does not include details of the alleged misconduct nor the identity of Individual A.
Fardon’s spokeswoman, Kimberly Nerheim, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
According to sources familiar with the case, Fardon had originally been prepared to move forward with a much more explicit indictment of Hastert, who prior to serving in Congress was a high school teacher and wrestling coach for more than 15 years in Yorkville, Illinois.
But Fardon’s office ultimately agreed to limit the amount of information in the indictment, according to these sources, in part because of a request from Hastert’s attorneys.
And why isn’t the blackmailer being charged with Extortion?
(Pity that he wasn't imprisoned back when it happened, and went on to **** the rest of us as Speaker for 8 years.)
This makes no sense. Transferring your own money to anyone without notifying the U.S. Government shouldn’t be against the law. (Yes, I know it is.)
The last time I checked, blackmail is against the law.
I’m no Hastert fan but, IMHO, he is being screwed by Washington. They should slap his hand and arrest the blackmailer.
Can someone tell me how he committed a crime by taking his own money and giving it to someone else?
He decided to take out his own money and give it to another person, the fact he’s being prosecuted for this shows how crazy these banking laws are.
Um, wrong thread dude.
CC
I agree. It is a crime but it shouldn’t be. It is illegal to take your own money out of the bank in such a way as to avoid reporting limits. That’s crazy.
I can see lying to the FBI being a crime. I also thought Clinton was guilty of a crime when he lied under oath.
I worry that Hastert will commit suicide. He looks terrible. Anyone who would pay that much money to keep something quiet is going to be very devastated when it goes public. It apparently happened around 40 years ago.
This day and age they should just argue that blackmail, bribing, lying, etc all all innate human traits that people are born with and cannot help. So we should be celebrating it rather than shaming it and making it illegal. Maybe we should be giving it some sort of tax benefits.
Do we know what the misconduct was? Can we assume it was illegal? Otherwise, how was the law broken by Hastert when he was being extorted?
Do we know what the misconduct was? Can we assume it was illegal? Otherwise, how was the law broken by Hastert when he was being extorted?
++++
He was arrested for transferring his own money to a blackmailer. If the money was going to the Red Cross he would still have been arrested.
How is that illegal?
“Do we know what the misconduct was? Can we assume it was illegal? Otherwise, how was the law broken by Hastert when he was being extorted?”
If you do not molest boys, your chances of being tempted to pay an Extortion are greatly decreased.
An unintended consequence might be that Constitutional Conservatives can be more demanding that our candidates don't hide their pasts. I'd like to know how how many supposed constitutional conservatives knew about this. I'd also like to know (as we suspected) how many of those who traitor us when they get to DC are being blackmailed.
Will Hastert go down silently or will he POINT OUT others currently doing a similar dance?
Banks have to report large withdrawals to the Feds. Part of the Drug War going way back. Structuring your withdrawals to avoid hitting that reporting limit is a crime.
How is that illegal?
++++
There is a $10,000 limit on cash transfers. Above that amount the banks have to report it. He skirted that law by transferring in smaller amounts but totaling $3,500,000.
That’s against the law - for some reason.
The only lie was him not telling the FBI why he was taking out the money, that’s ridiculous.
This law is flat out wrong.
I can understand they want to know and may want to investigate suspected money transfers etc for organized crime/drug reasons, but once they conclude that the money isn’t being used for any illegal purpose, to then charge someone with a crime for moving their own money around is ludicrous and wrong!!
I have no doubt whatever he agreed to pay to cover up is probably not pretty, but to be charged with a crime because you are doing legal things with your own money and don’t want to tell the busy body fed what it was is repugnant.
Charging someone with violating that law, just for violating that law is incredulous!
This law was put in place to track illegal things, for someone to decide to do something legal with their own money should NEVER result in them being charged with a crime!
The FBI coming to ask him what it was for, and then finding out it was not for anything illegal should have been the end of it. This is an absolute abuse of the law.
Clinton and 0bama have the advantage of having killed some of those same types of affairs. Dead men tell no tales. 0bama’s gone on to have even people who have touched his relevant papers killed, a la Loretta Fuddy (SCUBA diving, anyone?)
I don’t know, but to agree to pay someone 3.5 Million to keep quiet tells you whatever it was, would have destroyed him.... my guess would likely be something sexual in nature.
However, paying someone to keep quiet is not a crime in and of itself.... so this entire prosecution is insane.
He spent his own money on something he wanted to spend it on, once the FBI investigation proved that what he was doing with his money was not a crime, that should have been the end of this.
This is an abuse of the law as far as I’m concerned. How and what he decided to do with his own money is none of the feds business, to not tell them what it was for should not be a crime. Once the FBI discovered the money was not from or going to anything illegal that should have been the end of it. IF you can go to jail for just doing things with your own money and telling the Fed to get bent when they come asking about it, then we live in a tyrannical state. This law needs gone.. to be prosecuted purely from this is insane.
Not if he wants to have a nice place to live.............
The lying to the FBI however, was only a result of them investigating his money transfers... so its a garbage prosecution on all counts. Why should he have to explain what he is doing with his own money? If the fed investigates and can’t prove what he was doing with the money is illegal, then that’s it.
This is insane at every level.
This is clearly an abuse of the law, and not what this law was put on the books for. It is on the books to catch criminals, nothing that Hassert did with the money was illegal, so once the FBI determined that, that should have been the end of it.
To do something legal with your own money, should not be putting you at risk for jail time... this is wrong, in every aspect.
I have no doubt whatever he paid to keep quiet will be ugly, and probably sexual in nature, but what he has been charged with should not be a crime.
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