Hastert paid to ‘conceal his prior misconduct’

OPINION:

J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in U.S. House history, was being blackmailed, and he paid millions to keep his secret. 

That’s what federal indictment says, anyway. Hastert has been charged with illegally moving cash and lying to investigators.

This is what’s known: There is a person — “Individual A” — in the indictment (no one knows if that person is a male or a female). Hastert was paying Individual A $3.5 million to cover up “past misconduct.”

The indictment doesn’t explain what that “prior misconduct” was, or even when it occurred. Was it from the days Hastert a teacher and a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois? Was it from his 18 years walking the halls of Congress, eight of them as the third most powerful man in America (no doubt impressing all those young impressionable pages, often a target of sexually depraved lawmakers)?

Again, the feds don’t say. But in 2010, Individual A showed up and demanded Hastert pay for his “prior misconduct,” the indictment says. He agreed to pay $3.5 million “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A.”

But this is also exposed in the indictment: “Individual A has been a resident of Yorkville, Illinois and has known John Dennis Hastert most of Individual A’s life.” Plus, the individual met with Hastert several times “and discussed past misconduct by defendent against Individual A that had occurred years earlier.”

After those meetings, Hastert withdrew about $1.7 million in cash from several different bank accounts, first in $50,000 chunks, then in transactions of $10,000 or less. That’s a big non-no: federal law requires reporting of $10,000  or more, so when people make with repeated withdrawals of slightly less than the threshhold, the guys in the black van on the corner get suspicious.

But it’s just hours since the former Speaker was indicted. We’ll probably know all the details by the end of the day — and they won’t be pretty.