CHICAGO — Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep an unidentified person silent about “prior misconduct” by the Illinois Republican who was once third in line to the U.S. presidency, according to a federal grand jury indictment handed down Thursday in Chicago.
The indictment, which does not describe the misconduct Hastert was allegedly trying to conceal, charges the 73-year-old with one count of evading bank regulations as he withdrew tens of thousands of dollars at a time to make the payments.
He is also charged with one count of lying to the FBI about the reason for the unusual bank withdrawals.
Each count of the indictment carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Hastert withdrew a total of around $1.7 million in cash from various bank accounts from 2010 to 2014, and then provided it to the person identified in the indictment only as Individual A.
Hastert allegedly agreed to pay the person $3.5 million, but apparently never paid the full amount.
The indictment notes Hastert was a high school teacher and coach from 1965 to 1981 in suburban Yorkville, about 50 miles west of Chicago.
While the indictment says Individual A has been a resident of Yorkville and has known Hastert most of his life, it doesn’t describe their relationship.
The indictment says Hastert agreed to the payments after multiple meetings in 2010. It says that “during at least one of the meetings, Individual A and defendant discussed past misconduct by defendant against Individual A that had occurred years earlier” and Hastert agreed to pay Individual A $3.5 million “in order to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” the indictment says.
Around April 2012, bank officials began questioning Hastert about the large withdrawals, and starting in July of that year, Hastert reduced the amounts he withdrew at a time to less than $10,000 – apparently so the withdrawals would be less conspicuous, according to the indictment.
On Dec. 8, 2014, investigators questioned Hastert and he lied about why he had been withdrawing so much money.
He told investigators he didn’t trust the banking system, the indictment alleges.
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