John Dennis Hastert is an American politician, former educator, and convicted felon who represented from 1987 to 2007 and served as the 51st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007.
123 Facts About Dennis Hastert
2.
From 1965 to 1981, Dennis Hastert was a high school teacher and coach at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Illinois.
3.
Dennis Hastert lost a 1980 bid for the Illinois House of Representatives but ran again and won a seat in 1981.
4.
Dennis Hastert was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1986 and was re-elected every two years until he retired in 2007.
5.
Dennis Hastert rose through the Republican ranks in the House, becoming chief deputy whip in 1995 and speaker in 1999.
6.
In May 2015, Dennis Hastert was indicted on federal charges of structuring bank withdrawals to evade bank reporting requirements and making false statements to federal investigators.
7.
In October 2015, Dennis Hastert entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors.
8.
Under the agreement, Dennis Hastert pleaded guilty to the structuring charge ; the charge of making false statements was dropped.
9.
In court submissions filed in April 2016, federal prosecutors alleged that Dennis Hastert had molested at least four boys as young as 14 years of age during his time as a high school wrestling coach.
10.
Dennis Hastert was imprisoned in 2016 and was released 13 months later.
11.
Dennis Hastert became the highest-ranking elected official in US history to serve a prison sentence.
12.
Dennis Hastert was born on January 2,1942, in Aurora, Illinois, the eldest of two sons of Naomi and Jack Dennis Hastert.
13.
Dennis Hastert is of Luxembourgish and Norwegian descent on his father's side, and of German descent on his mother's.
14.
Dennis Hastert became a born-again Christian as a teenager, during his sophomore year of high school.
15.
Dennis Hastert attended Oswego High School, where he was a star wrestler and football player.
16.
Dennis Hastert briefly attended North Central College, but later transferred to Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college.
17.
Jim Parnalee, Dennis Hastert's roommate at North Central who transferred with him to Wheaton, was a Marine Corps Reserve member who in 1965 became the school's first student to be killed in Vietnam.
18.
Dennis Hastert continued to visit Parnalee's family each year in Michigan.
19.
Dennis Hastert was employed by Yorkville Community Unit School District 115 for 16 years, from 1965 to 1981.
20.
Dennis Hastert began working there, at age 23, while still attending NIU.
21.
Dennis Hastert led the school's wrestling team to the 1976 state title and was later named Illinois Coach of the Year.
22.
Dennis Hastert was a Boy Scout volunteer with Explorer Post 540 of Yorkville for 17 years, during his time as a schoolteacher and coach.
23.
Dennis Hastert reportedly traveled with the Explorers on trips to the Grand Canyon, the Bahamas, Minnesota, and the Green River in Utah.
24.
In 1973, Dennis Hastert married a fellow teacher at the high school, Jean Kahl, with whom he had two sons.
25.
The first round of balloting resulted in a tie, but Dennis Hastert was chosen after Grotberg interceded on Dennis Hastert's behalf.
26.
Dennis Hastert served three terms in the state House from the 82nd district, where he served on the Appropriations Committee.
27.
In 1986, at the urging of Governor James R Thompson, Hastert developed a plan to deregulate Illinois utility companies.
28.
Dennis Hastert was nominated to replace him; in the general election in November 1986, he defeated Democratic candidate Mary Lou Kearns, the Kane County coroner, in a relatively close race.
29.
Dennis Hastert was then reelected in his Fox Valley-centered district several times, by wider margins, aided by his role in redistricting following the 1990 Census.
30.
Dennis Hastert developed a close relationship with Tom DeLay, the House majority whip, and was widely seen as DeLay's deputy.
31.
Dennis Hastert spearheaded the GOP's fight against using sampling techniques to take the next census.
32.
Dennis Hastert criticized the Clinton administration's plans to conduct the 2000 Census using sampling techniques.
33.
Dennis Hastert was a supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and in 1993 voted to approve the trade pact.
34.
Dennis Hastert was a gun rights supporter who voted against the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
35.
Dennis Hastert was the "House Republicans' leader on anti-narcotics efforts" and was a strong supporter of the War on Drugs.
36.
Dennis Hastert served on the following House committees and in the following House positions.
37.
On that day, Dennis Hastert was endorsed by about 100 Republican representatives, ranging from conservatives such as Steve Largent to moderates such as Mike Castle, for the speakership.
38.
Nevertheless, in November 2004, Dennis Hastert instituted what became known as the Dennis Hastert Rule, which was an informal, self-imposed political practice of allowing the House to vote on only those bills that were supported by the majority of its Republican members.
39.
In 2013, after leaving office, Dennis Hastert disowned the policy, saying that "there is no Dennis Hastert Rule" and that the "rule" was more of a principle that the majority party should follow its own policies.
40.
Dennis Hastert adopted a much lower profile in the media than conventional wisdom would suggest for a Speaker.
41.
Dennis Hastert was known as a frequent critic of Bill Clinton, and immediately upon assuming the speakership, he "played a lead role" in the impeachment of the president.
42.
In 2000, Dennis Hastert announced he would support an Armenian genocide resolution.
43.
Dennis Hastert explained this by saying that he had received a letter from Clinton asking him to withdraw it because it would harm US interests.
44.
Dennis Hastert was a strong supporter of the Iraq War Resolution and the ensuing 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War.
45.
In 2006, Dennis Hastert visited Iraq at Bush's request and supported a supplemental Iraq War spending bill.
46.
Dennis Hastert opposed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, the landmark campaign finance reform law.
47.
In 2001, during the debate on the bill, Dennis Hastert criticized Republican Senator John McCain, the bill's cosponsor, saying that McCain had "bullied" House Republicans by sending them letters in support of his campaign-finance reform proposals.
48.
Dennis Hastert called the legislation "the worst thing that ever happened to Congress" and expressed the view that there were "constitutional flaws" in the legislation.
49.
In 2004, Dennis Hastert again feuded with McCain amid conflict between the House and the Senate over the 2005 budget.
50.
Dennis Hastert was key to the passage in November 2003 of key Medicare legislation which created Medicare Part D, a prescription-drug benefit.
51.
In 2004, Hoyer called upon Dennis Hastert to initiate a House Ethics Committee investigation into statements by Representative Nick Smith, a Republican of Michigan, who stated that groups and lawmakers had offered support for his son's campaign for Congress in exchange for Smith's support of the Medicare bill.
52.
Dennis Hastert issued a statement supporting DeLay, but the admonishment was viewed as harming DeLay's chances of succeeding Dennis Hastert as Speaker.
53.
On October 27,2005, Dennis Hastert became the first Speaker to author a blog.
54.
On June 1,2006, Dennis Hastert became the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House in history, surpassing the record previously held by fellow Illinoisan Joseph Gurney Cannon, who held the post from November 1903 to March 1911.
55.
Dennis Hastert later said that he donated the proceeds from one of the antique cars he sold at the auction to hurricane relief efforts.
56.
In 2006, Dennis Hastert became embroiled in controversy over his championing of a $207 million earmark for the Prairie Parkway, a proposed expressway running through his district.
57.
The Sunlight Foundation accused Dennis Hastert of failing to disclose that the construction of the highway would benefit a land investment that Dennis Hastert and his wife made in nearby land in 2004 and 2005.
58.
Dennis Hastert took an unusually active role advancing the bill, even though it was opposed by a majority of area residents and by the Illinois Department of Transportation.
59.
When he became frustrated by negotiations with White House staff, Dennis Hastert began working on the bill directly with President Bush.
60.
Dennis Hastert received five-eighths of the proceeds of the sale of the land, turning a $1.8 million profit in under two years.
61.
In 2012, after Dennis Hastert had departed from Congress, the highway project was killed after federal regulators retracted the 2008 approval of an environmental impact statement for the project and agreed to an Illinois Department of Transportation request to redirect the funds for other projects.
62.
In 2006, Hastert criticized an FBI search of Representative William J Jefferson's Capitol Hill office in connection with a corruption investigation.
63.
Dennis Hastert issued a lengthy statement saying that the raid violated the separation of powers, and later complained directly to President Bush about the matter.
64.
Dennis Hastert was reelected for an eleventh term to his seat in the House with nearly 60 percent of the vote, but that year the Republicans lost control of both the Senate and the House to the Democrats following a wave of voter discontent with the Iraq War, the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and a series of scandals among congressional Republicans.
65.
The day after the November election, Dennis Hastert announced he would not seek to become minority leader when the 110th Congress convened in January 2007.
66.
Financial disclosure documents indicate that Dennis Hastert made a fortune from land deals during his time in Congress.
67.
Dennis Hastert entered Congress in 1987 with a net worth of no more than $270,000.
68.
When Dennis Hastert left Congress twenty years later, he reported a significantly increased net worth, variously reported as between $4 million and $17 million and between $3.1 million and $11.3 million.
69.
At the time Dennis Hastert left Congress, much of his net worth remained tied up in real-estate holdings.
70.
In December 2007, Dennis Hastert endorsed Oberweis in the primary, and Burns withdrew from the race.
71.
In May 2008, six months after resigning from Congress, the Washington, DC-based law firm and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro announced that Dennis Hastert was joining the firm as a senior adviser.
72.
Dennis Hastert waited until the legally required "cooling-off period" had passed in order to register as a lobbyist.
73.
In 2013 and 2014, Dennis Hastert lobbied on climate change issues on behalf of Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company; in 2015, Dennis Hastert "switched sides" and lobbied for Fuels America, the ethanol industry group.
74.
Dennis Hastert lobbied on behalf of FirstLine Transportation Security, Inc ; Naperville, Illinois-based lighting technology company PolyBrite International; the American College of Rheumatology ; the San Diego, California-based for-profit education company Bridgepoint Education; REX American Resources Corp.
75.
The day the 2015 indictment was unsealed, Dennis Hastert resigned his lobbyist position at Dickstein Shapiro, and his biography was removed from the firm's website.
76.
In 2008, Dennis Hastert joined the board of directors of Chicago-based futures exchange company CME Group, where he earned more than 205,000 in total compensation in 2014.
77.
On May 29,2015, following his indictment, Dennis Hastert resigned from the board, effective immediately.
78.
Dennis Hastert accepted the funds, which went toward office space in far-west suburban Yorkville, Illinois; salaries for three staffers ; lease payments on a 2008 GMC Yukon sport utility vehicle; a satellite TV subscription; office equipment; and legal fees.
79.
Dennis Hastert's government-funded office closed in late 2012, at the end of the maximum five years for which public funds were provided.
80.
The federally funded benefits were legally required to be completely separate from Dennis Hastert's simultaneous lobbying activities for Dickstein Shapiro.
81.
In 2013, Hastert's former business partner J David John filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging that Hastert misappropriated federal funds for his post-speakership office in Yorkville for personal use, including private lobbying and business projects.
82.
Dennis Hastert made some endorsements of political candidates; in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries, he endorsed Mitt Romney instead of his predecessor as Speaker, Newt Gingrich.
83.
The indictment alleges that Dennis Hastert agreed to make payments of $3.5 million to an unnamed subject.
84.
Dennis Hastert just said he needed to generate some cash.
85.
On June 5,2015, ABC News' Good Morning America aired an interview with Jolene Reinboldt Burdge, the sister of Steve Reinboldt, who was the student equipment manager of the wrestling team at Yorkville High School when Dennis Hastert was the wrestling coach.
86.
Dennis Hastert ran an Explorers group of which Steve Reinboldt was a member, and led the group on a diving trip to the Bahamas.
87.
Jolene said that Dennis Hastert "damaged Steve I think more than any of us will ever know".
88.
Dennis Hastert contacted ABC News and the Associated Press on an off-the-record basis, and contacted some advocacy groups.
89.
ABC News and the AP could not corroborate Burdge's allegation at the time, and Dennis Hastert denied the accusation to ABC News at the time, so the claim was not published.
90.
ABC News reported that "for years, Jolene watched helplessly as Dennis Hastert basked in fame and power, seated to the left of the president for years in the early 2000s, during the nationally televised State of the Union address".
91.
Several days before the indictment was unsealed, Burdge was interviewed by FBI agents who asked her about her brother and informed her Dennis Hastert was about to be indicted on federal charges.
92.
In 2003, Dennis Hastert publicly called for legislation to "put repeat child molesters into jail for the rest of their lives".
93.
Dennis Hastert resigned his lobbyist position at the law and lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro the day the indictment was unsealed.
94.
Dennis Hastert's biography was quickly removed from the firm's website and the firm purged all mentions of him from its previously posted press releases.
95.
James Harnett, who was superintendent of the school district for five of the years that Dennis Hastert taught there, told the Chicago Tribune that he was not aware of any complaints of misconduct brought against Dennis Hastert at the time.
96.
In between the unsealing of the indictment and the arraignment, Dennis Hastert made no public appearances and did not release any public statement.
97.
However, on May 29,2015, CBS Chicago reported that Dennis Hastert had privately told close friends that "I am a victim, too" and that he was sorry they had to go through the ordeal.
98.
Durkin set a $4,500 unsecured bond as well as various other conditions of pretrial release, and Dennis Hastert surrendered his passport.
99.
At the arraignment, Durkin disclosed that he had contributed $500 in 2002 and $1000 in 2004 to the Dennis Hastert for Congress campaign; the contributions were made while Durkin was a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown, before he was appointed to the federal bench in 2012.
100.
On October 28,2015, under the plea agreement, Dennis Hastert appeared in court and pleaded guilty to the felony structuring charge.
101.
However, in late January 2016, Dennis Hastert's attorneys asked the court to delay sentencing due to Dennis Hastert's ongoing health problems, and Judge Durkin postponed sentencing until April 8,2016.
102.
Dennis Hastert earnestly apologizes to his former students, family, friends, previous constituents and all others affected by the harm his actions have caused.
103.
Dennis Hastert filed under seal a response to the government's presentence investigation report.
104.
Sixty letters asking for leniency for Dennis Hastert were submitted to the court ahead of sentencing, but 19 of these letters were withdrawn after Judge Durkin said that he would not consider any letters that were not made public.
105.
Shortly after being sentenced, Dennis Hastert paid the $250,000 fine and was ordered to report to prison on June 22,2016.
106.
On that date, Dennis Hastert reported to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota to begin his prison term.
107.
In July 2017, after serving about 13 months of a 15-month sentence, Dennis Hastert was released from federal prison and returned to Chicago under "residential re-entry management" supervision.
108.
In September 2021, days before trial was set to begin, Dennis Hastert reached a settlement with the plaintiff for an undisclosed amount.
109.
Dennis Hastert challenged this decision on the ground that the specific federal crime to which he pleaded guilty was not directly related to his time as a teacher.
110.
In May 2016, a few days after Dennis Hastert was sentenced to prison, the Hall of Fame revoked all of Dennis Hastert's honors, the first time the organization had ever taken such an action.
111.
In 2004, Dennis Hastert was presented the Order of the Oak Crown, Grand Cross by the grand duke of Luxembourg.
112.
Dennis Hastert resigned from the board of advisers of the center on May 29,2015, after the indictment against him was released.
113.
In May 2009, Dennis Hastert accepted the Grand Cross of the Order of San Carlos from Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia.
114.
In May 2010, Dennis Hastert accepted the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun from Akihito, emperor of Japan.
115.
Dennis Hastert called the measure's sponsor and stated that "he appreciated the recognition and honor" but asked that it be deferred given the "fiscal condition" of the state.
116.
Dennis Hastert has been married to Jean Dennis Hastert since 1973.
117.
Dennis Hastert's older son, Joshua, was a lobbyist for the firm PodestaMattoon, representing clients ranging from Amgen, a biotech company, to Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor.
118.
Hultgren received 55 percent of the vote, while Dennis Hastert received 45 percent.
119.
Dennis Hastert suffers from type 2 diabetes and requires daily insulin injections.
120.
Dennis Hastert has received treatment for kidney stones at least three times.
121.
In 2006, Dennis Hastert was hospitalized for cellulitis.
122.
In November 2015, the week after entering a guilty plea in federal court, Dennis Hastert suffered a stroke and was hospitalized until January 15,2016.
123.
At a court hearing in February 2016, Dennis Hastert's attorney said that Dennis Hastert "nearly died" from the blood infection.