Speaking of corruption in Illinois former Republican Speaker of the House and Illinois Congressman Denny Hastert has been indicted by a federal grand jury:
YORKVILLE, Ill. — J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.â€
Hastert, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement from Congress, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various acÂcounts in violation of federal banking laws that require the disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.
The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the “prior misconduct†by Hastert, but it noted that before entering state and federal politics in 1981, HasÂtert served for more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.
I never had much use for Mr. Hastert as Speaker but it looks like Illinois is plumbing new depths. It’s getting so a self-respecting state won’t be seen with us.
I was watching a cable TV show about Blago and the history of corrupt governors in Illinois, when Dan Walker called in to complain that his conviction was not related to politics. Walker defrauded his bank by receiving $1 million dollars in fake loans. A certain kind of corruption, but not political corruption.
We don’t know whether Hastert was corrupt. The laws he violated are laws whose sole purpose is to make it easier for law enforcement to determine whether a crime is being committed. In a sense, banks have been deputized to perform law enforcement investigation services for the feds. He was taking his own money out of the bank for his own purposes and he got snared by hubris, stupidity or fear. Probably gets points if he supported the bank surveillance laws when he was in Congress as well.
How long before the underlying “indiscretion” comes to light? Be interesting if it’s what it looks like.
There have been all sorts of speculations including child sexual abuse and an illegitimate child. There’s a potential “lying about sex” slant to this story, too.
Yup, what I thought … Live boys. Although I seem to recall the Dem Congress in 2006 eulogizing Gerry Studds as the greatest human being ever for doing the same thing.
From the get go I felt Hastert’s “secret” had something to do with a sexual indiscretion, probably pedophilia in nature, as most other social outliers are socially acceptable nowadays. It’s also almost assured that his reputation and life forward is toast — a trend that oftentimes follows a former out-of-bounds act, no matter how far it was committed in one’s past.
However, what I find troubling is the banking illegality snaring him, regarding the withdrawal of his own funds to keep his secret from being publicly divulged. Where does privacy and one’s personal use of their own money end, and banking disclosures to government begin anymore? Maybe that’s why greater numbers of personal funds are bypassing banking institutions altogether.
@Jan, Radley Balko had a good article on these banking laws that was a real eye-opener to me:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/24/the-federal-structuring-laws-are-smurfin-ridiculous/
When you have a reporting law that applies to transactions of $10,000 or more, it seems to me that the likely outcome are transactions just under $9,999. Some call this avoidance, and some call it compliance. The notion that the banks have affirmative law enforcement obligations, their failure to perform is punishable by jail time, seems unprecedented. And Hastert might have helped pass the law.
My current theory is that Hastert was involved in inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature that was not criminal because at the time the statutory rape law in Illinois only applied to children under age 16 and lacked a special provision (common today) for inappropriate conduct for people in a position of trust (such as teacher, etc.)
I believe this because of how the indictment is structured, describing recent events involving banking and extortion as criminal or potentially criminal conduct. Past events (prior to 2010) are described as “misconduct.” To me that suggests something more than the subjectively embarrassing (such as a homosexual encounter), but less than a crime. Breach of trust to a student aged 16 or over or a spouse could be that type of misconduct.