Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Indicted by Federal Grand Jury
May 28th, 2015Via: Washington Post:
J. Dennis Hastert, the longest serving Republican speaker in the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million because of “past misconduct” against an unnamed individual from their hometown west of Chicago.
Hastert, 73, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various accounts that violated federal banking laws that require disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.
The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the “prior misconduct” by Hastert against the individual from his hometown, Yorkville, but noted that before entering politics in 1981, Hastert spent more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at the local high school. The unnamed individual has known Hastert for most of that person’s life, the indictment states.
Hastert did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, and his legal team had not issued a statement about the charges on Thursday afternoon.
The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois, also alleges that Hastert lied to FBI agents last December when asked about the withdrawals.
Prosecutors said that in 2010, when the unnamed individual confronted Hastert about the allegations of misconduct, the former speaker agreed to pay out $3.5 million “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against” this person.
Over the next five years Hastert withdrew about $1.7 million in cash from his various bank accounts, at one point last year delivering $100,000 at a time to the person, the indictment alleges.
Beginning in 2013, the FBI and Internal Revenue Service began investigating “possible structuring of currency transactions to avoid the reporting requirements.” Hastert had made more than a dozen withdrawals of $50,000 in cash, which was provided to the unnamed individual every six weeks, the indictment said.
After bank representatives questioned him about the withdrawals, he began taking out less than $10,000 at a time, providing it to the unnamed person at set locations and times, prosecutors say. When Hastert was asked about the withdrawals, the indictment states that he told agents: “I kept the cash.”
However, the indictment states that this is a lie, and Hastert was trying to keep his agreement to pay the unnamed person “secret so as to cover up his past misconduct.”
So he is guilty of withdrawing money from his bank account!
Now I generally do not have much use for politicians. In this case, however, Mr. Hastert appears to be the victim. Now he may or may not have done whatever the blackmailer or extortionist threatened to reveal if Hastert did not ante up the money. However, Mr. Hastert’s conduct in that matter is not before the Federal Court upon an indictment although it was apparently mentioned in the text of the indictment. I wonder if the U.S. Government would prosecute the parents of a kidnapped child if they made several trips to a bank to make $9,999.00 cash withdrawals to get their child back alive? In a sense, this case is one of poetic justice as Mr. Hastert and his cronies were responsible for creating the American Police State which now threatens to snare every decent American.
Read “Three Felonies a Day.”
http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx
And the moral of the story is Never, ever, speak to a Federal law enforcement officer. Don’t even tell him it’s a nice day, because if he thinks it is not, you are in big trouble.
Three words: distraction, distraction, distraction.
Meanwhile….
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/05/19/commentary/world-commentary/hillary-clintons-lucrative-life-of-crime/
Individual A is not likely to face extortion charges, according to sources familiar with the case. One reason, sources said, is that it may not be entirely clear Individual A committed any criminal act. And even if that legal hurdle was resolved, sources added, in order to make an extortion case, prosecutors would need a victim willing to cooperate.
That victim, in theory, would be Hastert. But for Hastert to make the extortion claim, he would have to take the misconduct claim head-on.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dennis-hastert-case-alleged-case-sexual-misconduct-involving/story?id=31416385