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Title: 'It was sex': Law enforcement says Dennis Hastert hush-money scandal is about sexual misconduct with a male during his years as a high school wrestling coach
Source:
Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... is-town-coached-wrestling.html
Published: May 29, 2015
Author: David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor
Post Date: 2015-05-29 16:14:24 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 34014
Comments: 130
Former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert's hush-money scandal stems from sexual misconduct he committed during the years he was a high school wrestling coach, according to law enforcement sources. The Los Angeles Times on Friday quoted one source who said simply: 'It was sex.' Another told the paper that Hastert paid more than $1.7 million to cover up what the Times termed 'sexual abuse.' One of the officials said the 'Individual A' described in Hastert's federal indictment is a man and that the sexual misconduct allegedly occurred long before the former House speaker's political career – in the timeframe when he was a high school history wrestling and football coach. 'It goes back a long way, back to then,' the source told the Times. 'It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO AND TO READ THE INDICTMENT Former US House Speaker Dennis Hastert was a young high school wrestling coach (left, shown in a 1966 yearbook photo) when he committed sexual misconduct that has cost him millions to cover up, according to law enforcement sources. Hastert (right, in February) was indicted Thursday on federal charges including making false statements to the FBI SPEAKER: Hastert (right, shown with Rep. Nancy Pelosi in 2005) led the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007 This Oct. 25, 1975 photo shows Yorkville, Ill., high school wrestling coach and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (top left) and then-Illinois State University wrestling coach Larry Meyer (top right) watching a wrestling demonstration at a clinic in Bloomington, Ill. In addition to the public humiliation of an unsealed felony indictment, Hastert lost his lucrative lobbying job on Thursday. On its face, the criminal case charges that he knowingly made illegal bank withdrawals in a pattern of amounts just small enough to avoid triggering federal reporting requirements. But beneath the surface now lurks a sex scandal that could change how Hastert is remembered by history. Appearing Friday on MSNBC, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was 'surprised' at the latest revelations and called it a 'sad' episode for Congress. 'When Mr. Hastert was the speaker, our run for winning the house in '06 was to say that we were running against a culture or corruption cronyism and incompetence,' she said. 'At the time there were many indictments but we had no idea that that would include the speaker of the house.' Guessing what kind of secret Hastert had been hiding quickly became a parlor game on Thursday and Friday among Washington insiders who know the former speaker. As with the Los Angeles Times' sources, none of them who spoke with Daily Mail Online would agree to the publications of their names. 'It has to be something about the wrestling coaching in the '60s and '70s,' said one Republican House aide who has been on Capitol Hill since Hastert's first days as House speaker. A FOLEY LINK? Mark Foley resigned from Congress in disgrace while Hastert was speaker, after lurid texts and emails he sent to young male congressional pages were discovered – and Hastert allegedly sat on the information for months 404ed: Hastert's name and biography were stripped on Thursday from the website of Dickstein Shapiro LLP, the lawyer-lobbyist firm where he worked since 2008 The married 73-year-old former legislator's criminal charging document describes payments of $1.7 million in hush money to a person who lived in Yorkville, Illinois, the town where he coached and taught high school history. Including those details, according to one federal prosecutor, was a likely clue to the nature of the 'prior misconduct' Hastert was trying to cover up. 'The feds don't put superfluous facts in an indictment,' Jeffrey Cramer told the Chicago Tribune. 'If it's in there, it's relevant.' 'Individual A has been a resident of Yorkville, Illinois, and has known defendant JOHN DENNIS HASTERT most of Individual A's life,' Thursday's indictment reads. Cramer said Hastert's deep, dark secret could be devastating, given the size of the alleged payoff. '$3.5 million is a lot of money to keep a secret hidden,' he told the Tribune. 'Ten bucks says this is blowback from the Mark Foley thing,' a second Capitol Hill aide added Friday in a conversation with Daily Mail Online. That's a reference to a scandal that dogged Hastert while he was the most powerful member of the House of Representatives. HIDING A SECRET: It has emerged from law enforcement sources that Hastert's sexual 'abuse' of a minor during his coaching years led to the hush-money payments that put him in legal jeopardy THROW THE BUMS OUT: Hastert presided over the House during the period when President Bill Clinton survived a party-line vote in the US Senate following his impeachment by the House VINTAGE: Hastert is shown in 1985 when he was a member of the Illinois General Assembly In September 2006, then-Rep. Mark Foley of Florida resigned in the wake of revelations that he had sent sexually explicit emails and text messages to young male congressional pages. Hastert originally claimed he learned about the misconduct from news reports but later issued a statement acknowledging that he knew in late 2005 after staffers and other Republicans in leadership roles warned him personally about the problem. In the intervening months, Foley was allowed to co-chair a congressional caucus group focused on missing and exploited children. The bipartisan House Ethics Committee later ruled that Hastert was 'willfully ignorant' as the scandal unfolded. 'Why did he cover that up?' the second House staffer asked on Friday. 'Did he have a similar problem with a gay thing, and was he afraid of what would happen to him if he outed Foley?' But the Associated Press spoke with David Corwin, whose son wrestled for Hastert at Yorkville. 'You won't get anyone to say anything bad about him out here,' he said. 'Everybody loved him. The kids loved him and they still do.' Dickstein Shapiro, the firm where Hastert had worked since 2008, dropped his name and biography from its website within an hour of the announcement that a federal grand jury had charged him with two felonies. Hastert was previously co-leader of the firm's public policy and political law practice. The firm's website had previously noted that as a member of the Illinois General Assembly he 'spearheaded legislation on child abuse prevention.' He now faces two charges, each of which could send him to prison for five years and cost him $250,000 in fines. GLORY DAYS: Hastert was close with fellow former speaker Newt Gingrich Hastert was third in the presidential order of succession but now could go to prison for a decade Federal prosecutors in Chicago say he structured the withdrawal of $952,000 in cash in order to evade the requirement that banks report cash transactions over $10,000. He allegedly paid $1.7 million out of an agreed-upon $3.5 million amount to the mysterious 'Individual A' in order to 'compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct.' The indictment alleges that beginning in June 2010 Hastert withdrew $50,000 at a time and handed it over at six-week intervals. Two years later he switched to making withdrawals of less than $10,000. That's the cutoff point above which banks must file 'Currency Transaction Reports' with the federal government. The grand jury charged him with pulling money out of at least four separate banks on 106 different occasions, and lying to the FBI about it. In December 2014, according to the government, 'Hastert falsely stated that he was keeping the cash.' The Justice Department quoted him telling FBI agents: 'Yeah ... I kept the cash. That's what I'm doing.' He had allegedly told them that he didn't trust banks and meant to store his wealth on his own. The federal indictment does not explicitly say Hastert was being blackmailed or extorted, but does describe how investigators tried to determine whether he 'was the victim of a criminal extortion related to, among other matters, his prior positions in government.' In addition to leaving his lobbying job with Dickstein Shapiro, Hastert resigned Thursday from the board of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 14.
#1. To: cranky (#0)
He was part of the crew that sought to hang Clinton high for lying about a blowjob. As you measure out, so shall you be measured. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Total BS. This was nothing more than a shot across the bow of anyone who continues to pursue the corrpution of the Clintons, especially their so-called charitable Foundation. Remember Hillary have the FBI records of just about everyone. The clear message is if you pursue this we will get our revenge AND we know what you did. They are pure scum, as are just about all of the Democrats that cover for each other.
Yes, that's right. If you're going to go after people about sex, you had better be perfect. If you're imperfect, it will be found out, and you will be destroyed for you own sins, because YOUR allies are intolerant (and, it would seem, wracked with guilty consciences about their past sexual sins). The answer is simple; leave private sexual matters private. Go after financial impropriety. Go after stupidity. Go after corruption. But go after private sex lives, throw stones there, and you had better be sinless, because if you're not, you're going to go down under the stones too. I believe that the strategic term for this is Mutually Assured Destruction…but with a difference. The liberal side is tolerant, so they won't actually destroy a person for sexual peccadilloes, But the conservative hypocrites will. So, the net result is that the conservatives TRY to destroy liberals over sex, expose their darkest secrets, and liberals, like the French, yawn, and then focus on the people who were crass enough to try to take people down using their sexual sins. And then comes the revenge. And conservatives will always eat their own. Net result: the conservatives charge into the guns again and again and get destroyed by the very charges they TRY to bring against liberals. Republicans fight politics like they fight wars: stupidly. And they lose. There is a way out of the suicide trap: leave people's sex lives alone. If you refuse to do that, then expect to see the conservatives continue to be destroyed on this battlefield forever, because they are just as sexually impure as Democrats, but they are also stupid piranhas who eat their own. If you want to keep losing, choose this particular ground on which to fight. Your champions are as sinful as your opponents, but your opponents are much more forgiving of their own than your side is. Barney Frank didn't hide who he was. And he retired. Hastert hid who he was, paid millions in hush money, and is going to jail anyway, for a crime committed so long ago that the statute of limitations ran long ago. Dumb. That's a high price to pay in order to be a hypocrite. Far better to be honest. Or, if you live in a glass house and CAN'T be honest, to not throw stones.
Are you kidding? Have you been living in a cave?
No, I am not kidding. It's simple: Republicans attacked Clinton over his private sex life. Sex lives are off limits. Sure, you can make a scandal about it, you can embarrass and speechify. But they went past that. They ginned up an investigation, and then they ginned up an IMPEACHMENT, to remove a sitting President, for lying about a consensual blow job. It was an utter abuse of power over a trivial personal matter. The Republicans deployed for battle on THAT ground - and they lost. The public did not back them, because the GOP had gone into the fever swamps. For the first time in a century the out-of-power party LOST seats in the mid-terms. The political defeat was immediate. And then comes the reckoning. The revenge. Republican politicians who have no sexual sins have nothing to fear, right? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Oh, but they DO have something to hide. Salacious things, horrible things. And so one by one those men who attempted to stage a coup over a blow job, who abused the Constitution by bringing an IMPEACHMENT, to remove a popular elected President, over a sexual peccadillo…one by one their own vile sins are exposed, and they are wiped out. They were living in cave if they thought they were going to get off Scot free, given their own sexual sins, for trying to lynch another man for his.
You need to get your facts straight. "William Jefferson Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice......................" And he was guilty of both but the dishonorable Demcocrats protected him even though they knew he was guilty as charged.
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#2. To: Vicomte13, cranky, All (#1)
As you measure out, so shall you be measured.
#6. To: SOSO (#2)
#8. To: Vicomte13 (#6)
I believe that the strategic term for this is Mutually Assured Destruction…but with a difference. The liberal side is tolerant, so they won't actually destroy a person for sexual peccadilloes,
#12. To: SOSO (#8)
#14. To: Vicomte13 (#12)
Replies to Comment # 14.
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