Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Dies at 84. He Admitted Abusing Boys He Coached.

The longest-serving Republican speaker spent 13 months in federal prison for hiding cash payments to a man he'd abused.

Dennis Hastert, the wrestling coach who became speaker of the House and later went to federal prison in a hush-money case, has died at 84.

He was the longest-serving Republican speaker in history and the highest-ranking elected U.S. official ever to serve a prison sentence. The crime that sent him there involved how he took cash out of the bank. The sexual abuse of teenage boys that he admitted to in court happened too long ago to be charged.

Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell confirmed on Monday that Hastert died of natural causes at his home in Illinois over the weekend, CBS News reported. The coroner didn't give any other details.

The case that ended his public life began decades after the abuse. In 2008, a man prosecutors identified only as Individual A confronted Hastert, and Hastert agreed to pay him to stay quiet, NPR reported. His big withdrawals got the FBI's attention. When investigators asked about the money, Hastert told them he was being extorted. Prosecutors later said that was a lie.

The FBI and the IRS started investigating in 2013, and Hastert was indicted in 2015, CBS reported. He pleaded guilty that year to a single count of illegally structuring cash withdrawals so they'd slip under federal reporting rules, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago said. Prosecutors said they'd charged the only crimes that could still be prosecuted: the structuring, and the lie about why he did it.

Hastert, then 74, arrived for his sentencing at the federal courthouse in Chicago on April 27, 2016, in a wheelchair, and he used a walker to stand up and apologize, NPR reported. Scott Cross, 53, told the court that Hastert molested him alone in a locker room when he was 17, a senior and the captain of the Yorkville wrestling team. Cross is the brother of Tom Cross, a former Republican leader in the Illinois House whose political career Hastert had backed. Prosecutors said Cross was one of five boys Hastert abused in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin asked Hastert directly whether he had molested the boys. He said yes. Durkin called him a "serial child molester" and sentenced him to 15 months and a $250,000 fine. He also ordered Hastert into a sex offender program. Hastert served 13 months and was released in 2017.

"Mr. Hastert's legend and legacy are gone, and in its place are a broken, humiliated man," Zachary Fardon, then the U.S. attorney in Chicago, said after the hearing in remarks NPR aired. "That is as it should be."

Hastert was born in Aurora, Illinois, in 1942 and grew up in farm country. He taught and coached wrestling in Illinois for 16 years, and in 1976 he was named the state's coach of the year. He married Jean Kahl in 1973, and they had two sons. After a stint in the Illinois legislature, he won the 14th Congressional District seat in 1986 and stayed in the House for 20 years.

He rose to chief deputy whip in 1995 but wasn't the party's first choice for speaker. When Newt Gingrich stepped down in 1998, House Republicans first picked Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana. Livingston withdrew amid a scandal over his affairs, and Hastert, who'd come to be called the "accidental speaker," got the job. He worked closely with President George W. Bush. After Republicans lost the House in the 2006 midterms, he gave up the leadership, resigned from Congress in 2007 and went to work as a lobbyist and consultant.

One thing from his time in charge outlasted his career. Under the informal Hastert rule, the House takes up only bills that most of the majority party supports. Critics say the practice has made Congress more partisan, and in recent years it's caused problems for the Republican leaders who inherited it.

Source: CBS News, retrieved October 5, 2026. Other sources: NPR, justice.gov.