Or exactly as some suspected:
Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was paying an individual from his past to conceal sexual misconduct, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
One of the officials, who would not speak publicly about the federal charges in Chicago, said “Individual A,” as the person is described in Thursday’s federal indictment, was a man and that the alleged misconduct was unrelated to Hastert’s tenure in Congress. The actions date to Hastert’s time as a Yorkville, Ill., high school wrestling coach and teacher, the official said.
Federal prosecutors have announced bank-related charges against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
“It goes back a long way, back to then,” the source said. “It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office.” Thursday’s indictment described the misconduct “against Individual A” as having “occurred years earlier.”
Asked why Hastert was making the payments, the official said it was to conceal Hastert’s past relationship with the male. “It was sex,’’ the source said. The other official confirmed that the misconduct involved sexual abuse.
Hastert has not responded to requests for comment. Representatives of his lobbying firm declined to comment.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million in apparent hush money to the individual, then lied to the FBI when asked about suspicious cash withdrawals from several banks.
The stunning indictment of the longtime Republican powerhouse alleged he gave about $1.7 million in cash beginning in 2010 to the acquaintance.
Hastert, 73, of Plano, was charged with one count each of structuring currency transactions to evade currency transaction reports and making a false statement to the FBI, counts that each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. He will be arraigned later at U.S. District Court in downtown Chicago.
My initial thought was that it was overcriminalization due to the drug war to prosecute him for doing these financial transactions, but may be that they are charging him with because they have an unwilling witness or the statutes for molestation have expired.
Via TPM, there was this eery call on CPSAN:
Hastert had a 92% voting rating with the Christian Coalition and was your typical anti-LBGT godvbothering bigot. Go figure.
Elizabelle
It sickens me that Hastert had this in his past, and was leading the charge for Clinton’s impeachment.
It’s always projection with these jerks.
Also makes me wonder if anyone on Capitol Hill knew of the past allegations, and used them for leverage with Hastert.
gogol's wife
That clip is really disturbing. (mainly because of Hastert’s face, but also the weird call)
Germy Shoemangler
Bruce: “Remember me? From Yorkville? Heh heh heh”
“Okay, next caller.”
And Ceiling Cat looks down and rolls her eyes.
dedc79
@Elizabelle:
Was there anyone leading the charge for Clinton’s impeachment who didn’t have something shady in their past? Bob Barr? Check. Newt Gingrich? Check. Dan Burton? Check. Henry Hyde? Check. Helen Chenoweth? Check.
SatanicPanic
I don’t know if I would say it was uglier than I thought, because this is pretty much exactly what I thought it would be.
SatanicPanic
@dedc79: praise FSM for Larry Flynt back then. Whatever you want to say about that guy, he was a patriot of the highest order in those years.
c u n d gulag
The man’s whole life was a lie!
If this was sex with a consulting adult male, then, outside of his hypocrisy, who would care?
But, apparently it goes back to his HS teaching and coaching days.
So, that’s NOT with a consenting adult male.
Well, let him reap what he’s sowed.
My fear is, because he’s the “victim” of the blackmail, he’ll be charged on the money transactions – and given a slap on the wrist – but the child, now and adult, who’s blackmailing him will be the one who goes to jail.
I’m not condoning blackmail.
But, maybe the boy was to traumatized that, later in life, since he couldn’t do anything legally, he decided to make Hastert pay financially!
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
And now, the old spider will face charges, but it might be the fly caught in his web, who’ll pay the price.
Ugly, all the way around!
NotMax
eerie
Not to say the call wasn’t related, but there are multiple eerie calls on that C-SPAN program every single day.
NonyNony
Still no word on whether the other individual involved was a minor at the time, though given way the story is breaking and the way that Hastert isn’t saying jack shit to try to stop it from snowballing AND the fact that his attorneys convinced the Feds to NOT put the reasons he was being blackmailed into the charges filed against him, he’s pretty much leaving it up to everyone to assume that it was in fact at least statutory rape.
@Elizabelle:
Not only that but he was PICKED for the job after Gingrich stepped down because the guy who wanted to succeed Gingrich (Livingston) found out that his extra-marital affairs were going to become public. Hastert was picked because everyone thought he had no skeletons in his closet.
Arclite
Not just sex, but underage gay sex.
Your modern conservatives in a nutshell: you have to follow these strict rules, because I cannot.
goblue72
NY Times reporting is was sexual abuse, which means victim was underage – http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/us/politics/hastert-indictment.html
Other media outlets also reporting the victim was underage.
As I noted in the “Hillary should stop speaking chitlin” thread below, you don’t shell out over $3 million in hush money its the ghey sex between consenting adults. Not in 2015.
JPL
Bill Bennett will go on Fox and say that since the boy was a teen, it wasn’t sex. He gave the priests a cover for their pedophile.
@c u n d gulag: I think you are right that the victim goes to jail and Hastert gets a slap a few days of negative news coverage.
jl
I was not very surprised by the allegations. Actually, not surprised at all. Besides the details that pointed to ‘man on man’ and that one of the mans was underage at the time the undisclosed bad thing happened, the revelations with this type of conservative GOP pol or religious leader, are really like clockwork by now. Every couple of months, seems like the time for another hypocrite to be revealed.
Edit: IIRC Hastert was House Speaker, or minority leader, who covered for Foley soliciting male teen Congressional pages. I also remember that is when Boehner had some teary photo ops with kids to hide his part in the cover up. Really horrible people.
Arclite
@NonyNony:
Yeah, you don’t give out millions if the other party was past the age of consent. Thousands maybe, but not millions.
goblue72
@NonyNony: Media reports are sexual “abuse” which means underage victim.
If it was sexual contact between two adults, it would be reported as sexual harassment.
Bystander
Who can forget Bob Livingston inviting Clinton to join him in falling on his sword? It was superb comedy. Didn’t Flynt say later that he had been bluffing and Livingston took the bait? Only ups the hilarity.
Betty Cracker
Figures. The blackmailer must have some pretty solid evidence to move that kind of bank.
Kathleen
I wonder if “The Hastert Rule” will be renamed.
CONGRATULATIONS!
As soon as the news hit that he was getting busted for evading Patriot Act restrictions on money withdrawals I knew what this was going to be about.
Sick fuck.
rk
3.5 million is a LOT of money! There must be something terrible he’s hiding. But I’m guessing that if he was a serial predator of some kind then there must be others who will probably speak out now that things are starting to come out.
Arclite
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Heh, bet he wishes he could take that vote back.
trollhattan
@Arclite:
Exactly. If there’s one thing Republicans value above their public image/reputations, it’s money. Beautiful, beautiful money that he quietly shoveled over in great volumes. That’s the tell it was illegal. And who knows, there’s probably an avalanche of others to come, ala Sandusky.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Oh wow, that video clip is something else. Hastert is clearly terrified.
Iowa Old Lady
What is with these people? How much do they defy the statistics on same sex sexual abuse of minors? I’m boggled.
Bill
When the indictment was released yesterday I thought it seemed hardcore to prosecute a guy who was being blackmailed, but I think you’re exactly right John. He’s being prosecuted for what they can get him on now. And rightly so.
NonyNony
@goblue72:
That’s the assumption I’d make, but it was pointed out to me that they’d probably use the same language if he were overseeing hazings of his wrestling squad that went too far or if it was rape of someone of legal age who for whatever reason didn’t report it at the time.
But that said – every minute he refuses to release a statement explaining exactly why he was paying someone $3.5 million to go away the more it looks like he was messing around with an underage student.
scav
Why did they bother with negociating obscure language if it was so clearly what people would likely first think of given the price and the timing?
sukabi
There’s going to be more victims speaking up, that are not involved in this indictment. Think they are starting to come forward. University pulled hos name, he resigned from board, etc…much more to come.
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: whoa yeah, looks like he’s seen a ghost
Arclite
Why do Republicans choose to be gay? I mean, it’s a choice, right? They can choose, so why do it? Why endanger their livelihoods and conservative reputations? They could easily switch back to women at any time, so why don’t they?
jl
@Arclite:
” They could easily switch back to women at any time, so why don’t they? ”
Good catch on the inconsistency. On other hand, what difference would it make? On a personal level, this type does seem to believe in gender equality when it comes to abusive behavior.
Tree With Water
“The stunning indictment of the longtime Republican powerhouse alleged he gave about $1.7 million in cash beginning in 2010 to the acquaintance”.
My initial take is this: “Longtime Republican powerhouse” is debatable. He was more a cipher in the House until the GOP leadership handed him the Speaker’s gavel. He was a non-entity that would take orders, chosen to obscure the exposed philandering of back-to-back Republican Speakers of the House. But he double-crossed them, and when the truth was brought to their attention, he was forced out of congress altogether.
My question: What did republican shot callers really know, and when did they know it? Their silence is deafening, I think, because Hastert knows the answer to those two questions, and Hastert is cornered. He’s probably made a few phone calls by this point, and is even now waiting to see if anyone dares ignore him by not to returning them…
NonyNony
@scav:
That was what I was thinking yesterday when I found out his lawyers got the Feds to leave the reason for the charges out of the paperwork. That fact alone is enough to make people jump to statutory rape (or worse), so why not negotiate to have it written in a way that at least allows him to provide some level of spin on it? It’s weird – and makes me think that whatever horrible thing I’m thinking it might be, it’s probably worse.
trollhattan
@Arclite:
Heh.
Bill
@c u n d gulag:
Based on the wording in the indictment, I assumed it was blackmail too. But it could be legitimate payment for settlement of a civil suit (or threat of a civil suit). Based on what little we know that suit could have it’s own statute of limitations problem, but there is a scenario is which the victim was legitimately entitled to the money.
chopper
cray cray. i know the guy somewhat and I gotta say I did not see this coming at all.
trollhattan
@Tree With Water:
At about 1:30 a.m. Fox News will report, “Garble, blather, something, something, Hastert..nothing, really. And now, Sarah Palin with Tawd’s new Snow Mashine!”
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SatanicPanic: Google “Mark Allen Collman”. He may well have.
jl
@Tree With Water:
” chosen to obscure the exposed philandering of back-to-back Republican Speakers of the House. But he double-crossed them, and when the truth was brought to their attention, he was forced out of congress altogether. ”
I don’t fully understand that, probably because I did not follow news on bigwig Congressional dirtbags closely at the time. You are saying Hastert’s predecessors were covering too, chose Hastert to continue the cover-up, but he didn’t or couldn’t get the job done, so was sacked? Gotta link with the history?
Myiq2xu
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Sweaty Denny’s involvement with the Mark Foley scandal.
NonyNony
@trollhattan:
You give them too little credit. I’m assuming Fox News will not say anything about this until the truth about why he was paying the money comes out, and then they will make sure to denounce former Democratic Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert at every opportunity.
Tree With Water
@jl: No, I’m saying/speculating that Hastert’s two predecessors as Speaker had already been busted and bounced out of power, and that he lied to everyyone when asked if there were any such skeletons in his closet. Remember Tom Eagleton? If not, google the name.
jl
@Tree With Water: OK. thanks.
joel hanes
@Elizabelle: @jl:
IIRC Hastert was House Speaker, or minority leader, who covered for Foley soliciting male teen Congressional pages.
Digby has dredged up a post by Down With Tyranny’s Howie Klien that alleges Rahm Emmanuel definitely knew about Foley and covered for him.
For some reason, I’m disinclined to give Rahm the benefit of the doubt.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
Apparently there were rumours for years about his personal life, read sexual preferences, but someone on his staff ‘took care of it’. If I find the article I will link it. These guys always covering for each other.
NonyNony
NBC news has more blatant language:
The story is also full of quotes from people who don’t believe it and talk about what a nice guy he was when he was a High School teacher.
joel hanes
@Myiq2xu:
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Sweaty Denny’s involvement with the Mark Foley scandal.
Digby and Talking Points Memo have got you covered.
Felonius Monk
Dennis Hastert was first and foremost a sleazy, corrupt politician. He will probably never be prosecuted for his crimes against the American public. He was also a driving force behind the legislation that forbids Medicare from negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices.
Does anyone remember Sybil Edmonds? She had pretty much fingered him to be the recipient of huge amounts of $$ (can you say bribes) in the form of small (i.e. donor not reportable) campaign contributions. These were allegedly from Turkish interests. And then who did he go to work for as a lobbyist after he left the House? That’s right — a firm with major clients that are Turkish or represent Turkish interests.
Dennis Hastert tried to come across as a nice guy, but as his current difficulties show, he was anything but that. I wish him a long and unhappy incarceration.
SRW1
@Myiq2xu:
I can’t believe that you’re so superstitious that you jumped over comment #13 in this thread.
Or is it the reading comprehension?
trollhattan
@NonyNony:
Gawd, you’re right. “D, California” after his name on each use.
srv
@c u n d gulag:
What was the age of consent 35 or 40 years ago? What student laws were there?
mdblanche
This is so awful that during the speculation phase I was hoping this wasn’t what it was. Ugh, just ugh.
trollhattan
@srv:
What’s a “student law?” A law learning about science and developing new job skills?
Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog
I would hope that Bill Clinton might send Hastert a nice note at this difficult time.
Dear Denny,
It’s been years since we talked, but I felt it might do you some good to know I have no hard feelings about the impeachment, and
I hope the courts treat you as gently as your repeated violations of the PATRIOT Act and the statute of limitations on child abuse will permit.
Regards,
Bill
jl
@trollhattan: That’s why Fox News is fair and balanced. By now, there does seem to be an ideological imbalance in this particular combination of public practice and private misbehavior. Someone has to balance it out, right?
Cacti
@SatanicPanic:
Yep.
You don’t pay out that kind of hush money unless you’re in dead girl/live boy territory with your “indiscretions”.
kc
Popehat sure called it: We’ll learn more about the reasons for Hastert’s payments in the course of the case (or through Department of Justice leaks calculated to harm him).
SatanicPanic
@srv:
dude, if you have a time machine you should really use it for something better than that
Tree With Water
@NonyNony: I had worked three years alongside a guy when he was arrested for molesting his grandson. My first reaction was, “no way”- I was stunned. You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather. The SOB was convicted, too, and sent to prison.
satby
The right-wingers from his area are already on FB defending Hastert:
Keith P.
Every time a news pundit mentions ‘piledriver’, you have to take a drink.
Zandar
Freebie:
Ol’ Dirty Hastert.
Tree With Water
@kc: Vince Foster had it right when he said the the politics of Washington D.C. was a blood sport.
And George Schultz was right when he noted, “There’s no such thing as a finish-fight in Washington.. which is why the GOP was so damned gratified when Bill Clinton announced “the era of big government is over”.
Valdivia
I first assumed it was a love-child kind of scandal. Then a lot of people on twitter said that from reading the indictment it was pretty obvious that it would be this. I need to learn to read between the lines in indictments.
heckblazer
From what I’m reading, Hastert entered Congress worth about $200k and left worth $6 million. Impressive, especially since that’s before his lobbying work.
Elizabelle
@Zandar: LOL.
Youthful indiscretions, this time with a youth.
mai naem mobile
The Trib story has multiple victims but that the prosecutors only went with one guy. I’m assuming it’s because its past the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations is ten years after the victim is an adult basically around 15 years.
Remember with Bill Clinton and Monica it was “he could be blackmailed by a foreign spy.” Well ,I have a similar question now for the rw. How the fuck was this guy 3rd in line to be prez with this shit in his background?
kc
@Tree With Water:
It’s not even politics at this point. Hastert has been retired for years.
heckblazer
@srv: As John Oliver has said before about the age of consent, “[I]f you find yourself parsing exactly where it is, you’ve probably already done something very, very wrong.”
scav
@trollhattan: Maybe it’s a cute little innocent law before it’s exposed to and corrupted by exposure to the PC- atheist- liberal higher edjumacation nonsense; a law harkening back to the good-old-days where sexually messing with the student bodies was nothing to get all so dag-burned het up about.
trollhattan
@satby:
Never fails to amuse me, that one.
You know who else “came from good people….”
mdblanche
@trollhattan: “good people” = white people
JPL
@mai naem mobile: This is from buzz feed
A source familiar with the investigation told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon considered but did not pursue additional charges against former Speaker Dennis Hastert, which would have included a reference to an Individual B, one of potentially several alleged victims of “prior misdeeds.”
askew
Ugh, this is so gross.
And it means John Boehner is the only Republican speaker in 60 years to not have a sex scandal.
Calling it now that Boehner’s sex scandal involves a Cheeto fetish.
JPL
Is it to late for a civil suit?
Lavocat
Let’s dedicate one to the closeted bigots of the Republican Party …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOULjyy-n8
Tree With Water
@kc: Nope, this is American politics 101. It’s like the mafia- once you are in, you’re in forever. For crying out loud, the man is a registered lobbyist…
satby
@trollhattan: Yeah, you know they mean “white people like me”.
And how that nutzoid could somehow make it Obama’s fault is actually a tour de force of crazy.
The thinly veiled threat of “people shooting at e.each other” is nice, don’t you think?
So the idea that the crazies will abandon their puppets if they’re caught “with a live boy or a dead girl” is wrong.
Major Major Major Major
I looked it up, and best as I can tell (IANAL), there is no statute of limitations in IL for sex crimes against a minor. Federally I dunno.
Tree With Water
@JPL: “B” as in Boehner? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
kc
@JPL:
After you’ve spent five years blackmailing the “perp?” I’m gonna say “yes.”
dubo
Why have I seen so many “progressives” today claiming that transferring millions of dollars to friends/employees/blackmailers/total strangers tax-free is “overcriminalization”? Are you guys nuts?
jl
@Tree With Water: The harmful circumstantial evidence, that lead to some of us not being very surprised at all by the allegations, was right there in the indictment, and in the initial news reports. Hastert’s own conduct, and his lying during the investigation, spread quite a bit of blood. Enough to destroy a lesser person, if not an important man like Hastert.
trollhattan
@askew:
I’m voting for his long-running Canadian Club affair. So very foreign.
Lavocat
@askew: I’m going with hand-crafted carrot dildos.
Elizabelle
@Valdivia: I’m not good at reading indictments myself.
Here is the Hastert indictment.
NonyNony
@Tree With Water:
That’s generally how it goes – the people who get away with this shit are usually not the kind of people who get a “of course he did it – I always thought he was a weirdo” reaction because if they were they wouldn’t get away with it.
That said – this can all get worse. So far it’s at about the “best” for Hastert that I thought it would get- a coach having a “relationship” with a student athlete is gross and criminal, but also something that anyone who grew up in a Midwestern town in the 80s probably has some similar story about from their High School. So I’m thinking there’s still time for this all to get even more criminal before it’s done, because as it stands now I still don’t see why he was paying as much as he did or why his lawyers didn’t get the charges downplayed instead of keeping them out altogether.
ETA – And right after I click POST @JPL provides the proof that it’s going to get worse for Hastert. Multiple victims? Yeah – that goes beyond an “inappropriate relationship with a student” and right into “serial predator” territory. And uncaught for decades too – damn.
Valdivia
@Major Major Major Major:
I was curious about this too. They’re getting him on lying to the FBI and financial crimes, nothing about the abuse, so either there is a statue of limitations issue or the law was different when it happened?
@Elizabelle:
I reread it yesterday after the speculation began and could not really ‘see’ what everyone else was seeing. But obviously they were right.
Now you give me a poem I will read between the lines of it like a boss :)
JPL
@kc: If there are several victims, then could they sue? At this point there is no reason to stay silent.
scav
@satby: Tough on crime is so for those other people. Look at how much he was paying to put up non-broken windows that no one could ever look through!
SRW1
@srv:
What about you research the conversion rate for $3.5 million in the Book of Indulgencies?
Brachiator
@satby:
Sad, but not surprising.
Germy Shoemangler
Here’s a photo of Hastert from back in the day, when he was coaching and rockin’ that sweater vest. And is that a chub? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Saw this great comment:
When the news breaks that there is a sex scandal about a Democrat, their fellow Democrats always say, “I hope the girl was of age.”
When the news breaks that there is a sex scandal about a Republic, their fellow Republicans always say, “I hope it was with a girl.”
Calouste
@Cacti: I don’t think you pay that kind of money if it’s just one live boy, even considering Haster’s personal wealth.
trollhattan
Speaking of pederasts and payoffs
The Wall Street Journal reports that Neverland Ranch, the 2,800-acre California property where Michael Jackson once lived, is now on the market for $100 million.
Funny how like Elvis, he’s worth more dead than when alive.
JPL
@satby: If you can post on the site, copy and paste the buzzfeed that I blockquoted at 72.
Lavocat
@NonyNony: Bingo. One has to wonder what sort of grotesque sexual deviancy lies under the yet undiscovered rocks in Hastert’s past. Are we talking bestiality orgies or what? I mean, how sick can it get? Are we talking dead boys?
Tree With Water
@NonyNony: When all is said and done, I just hope the republican party brand is damaged- and, as always, the worse, the better. I hope the fallout from this ugliness is extensive…
Gimlet
For any of you thinking to help out Denny, his GoFundMe Page asks that you do it with donations no greater than 9,999.50.
Thanks in advance.
kc
@JPL:
From what I read Hastert hasn’t been employed by a school district since 1981. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is in Ill, but I would think the period to sue has long since expired.
Warren Terra
I certainly heard vague rumors about something hinky from Hastert’s days as a high school wrestling coach years ago, and I’m not in any way well informed: rumors were simply floating around the internet. I didn’t believe the rumors, but their existence was no secret.
jl
Maybe I am wrong on this, but was not the original law he violated about evading laws for reporting financial transactions involving large amounts of cash? And are not those laws important part of an international financial regulation, and a legitimate tool for uncovering terrorist activity and funding?
So, I don’t the whole line that Hastert is being caught up in some sneaky entrapment deal. His violation of finance law seem important to me too on their own merits. I don’t see how the fact that is was used to pay hush money for some kind of involvement in sexual abuse, excuses it, or makes going after him illegitimate or prosecutorial over reach.
trollhattan
@Tree With Water:
Huckabee has already forgiven him and Hastert has another surprise: he’s now the twentieth Duggar!
NonyNony
@Valdivia:
OR – sexual abuse is a state crime and the Feds don’t have jurisdiction. But messing with the PATRIOT Act requirements for reporting large financial transactions is Federal jurisdiction. (“They busted Capone for tax evasion” is the usual applicable quote here).
@dubo:
And even if you do believe it’s overcriminalization – freaking Hastert was the Speaker of the House when these regulations were passed. If there’s anytime the phrase “hoist by his own petard” might come into play it’s right here.
Germy Shoemangler
@Warren Terra: Certainly, since “Bruce” from Yorkville had some fun calling CSPAN to chuckle about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl:
Bingo.
@Valdivia: Any sexual abuse crimes are likely to be state crimes and thus not prosecutable by the Feds. Quite probably there are SoL issues at the state level (n.b. I am not licensed in IL and I did not look anything up).
ruemara
First thing I thought when I heard the sum and the length of time was, dead woman or live boy? Next thing I thought was, oh goody, another Sandusky.
jl
@NonyNony: Thanks, I thought I read that someplace. The guy is being prosecuted for violating the very laws he helped pass in the House.
Bobby Thomson
@Kathleen: I would mention it by name every time Boehner refuses to allow a vote.
NonyNony
@Tree With Water:
Eh – this will do nothing to the Republican brand because people who are voting Republican do not care about stuff like this.
In order to vote for Republicans you pretty much have to be of the mindset that every politician is a crook and the only thing that is important is that the crook you vote for does the things that you want that crook to do. Democrats are the ones who expect their politicians to be clean as newfallen snow – Republicans’ could give a rat’s ass about what their politicians do as long as their politicos vote for tax cuts and abortion restrictions.
I just hope his victims get justice, though if they’ve justified his abuse for this long it’s likely that some of them will be among his biggest defenders (that’s how it seems to go with a lot of abuse victims, sadly.)
kc
@jl:
That’s what he was charged with.
Opinions vary as to how terrific those laws are.
Gindy51
And the Duggars are breathing a huge sigh of relief….
raven
@Bobby Thomson: Things changed here in a couple of hours.
Gimlet
It’s going to be tough to continue as a lobbyist for Denny.
Maybe he should approach TLC about a reality show?
Elizabelle
Per the indictment, over about 2.5 years, from July 2012 to December 2014, John Dennis Hastert withdrew $952,000 in separate transactions on at least 106 occasions.
Over 100 occasions on which he had to think again of why he was pulling money out of his account.
Worse will come Mr. Hastert’s way, but that has to have hurt ….
Would love to know what Mrs. Hastert thinks of almost two million winging its way out of marital property. She was also a teacher at Yorkville High; they married in 1973; he left the school in 1981. They have two sons who have followed their dad into lobbying and politics.
Valdivia
Wait, if he broke the law (clearly he did, also lying to the FBI) how is this entrapment, or a set up or anything like this? Am I missing something?
@NonyNony: @Omnes Omnibus:
thanks for clarifying that, I assumed sexual crimes were local but didn’t know if some had made it to federal level.
David Koc
Irony: Party of Family Values has no values.
scav
@Gimlet: Or FIFA? Empty positions there I hear. Could Putin give him a shout-out?
debbie
@Bystander:
Don’t leave out how, during his final speech in the House, Livingston called on Clinton to do the honorable thing like he had and resign from ofice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
That is quite simple. It isn’t. That is just chaff being thrown out there by Hastert’s defenders.
jl
@kc:
” Opinions vary as to how terrific those laws are. ”
So?
Cacti
Republican Cole strikes again:
Clinton Foundation gives a paid position to Sidney Blumenthal, not violating any law? “Malfeasance is afoot!”
Denny Hastert indicted for alleged violations of federal statute? “Well, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
chopper
@Zandar:
that needs hashtaggin’
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Interesting juxtaposition.
NonyNony
@kc:
Mostly opinions vary about the prosecutors using those laws – those regulations are in place to detect fraud, tax evasion, and criminal money laundering activities. Congress should fix the laws back to where they were so that it requires that the person doing it is doing it willfully to break the law for tax evasion or other criminal purposes.
But since Hastert was one of the fools who had a chance to fix this and “willfully” chose not to I will engage in some schadenfreude as I watch the petard he helped to build hoist him up.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
yes, of course, the Hastert as martyr part of story now begins. Should have known.
piratedan
Well, this certainly brings a new twist to the idea that the GOP is the party of family values….
So we have sexual harassment at work – Ensign, Foley
Sexual solicitation in a public place – Craig
Sexual abuse with a minor – Hastert
Sex with a prostitute – Vitter
Bagman to payoff harassed – Coburn
no wonder these guys are so concerned about sex…..
Cacti
Remember boys and girls, you can’t spell “grope” without G-O-P.
Aleta
@Arclite: excellent question.
AxelFoley
@Kathleen:
Well played. Well fucking played. LOL
scav
This is suddenly overcriminalization. Massive fines and/or jail-time for jay-walking or mouthing off to cops, if not death, that’s just shut up, it’s the law, you enabling whiners.
Gin & Tonic
And as counterpoint? Ross Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, gets life without parole and a forfeiture of $183 million.
kc
@jl:
I was responding to this, from you: And are not those laws important part of an international financial regulation, and a legitimate tool for uncovering terrorist activity and funding?
I mean, that certainly is the government line. Yet it’s weird how frequently these laws seem to be used to pull down people for shit completely unrelated to international finance and/or terrorism activity and funding.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: Good one!
eemom
May have been mentioned already, but some states have statutes that provide there’s no SOL in cases of child sex abuse, or that it’s tolled for a certain period after the victim reaches majority. Don’t know if IL is one.
kc
@NonyNony:
I agree.
Yep, there’s that too . . .
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@srv:
35 or 40 years ago, the ages of consent for heterosexual and homosexual activity would have been different. That’s still the case in some states to this day.
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/age-of-consent-by-state.html
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: Shouldn’t he? He ran a major international drug smuggling operation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about decriminalization, and I, uh, have heard about people who have friends who may have used it, but he broke like every nonviolent law.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom:
jl
@kc: Interesting or not, seems to me this is quite a bit more straightforward even than getting Capone on tax evasion.
I don’t see how my comment signals any contradiction. How can such laws be used to find hidden evasion of financial regulation or uncover terrorist funding networks, if it is presumed they should only be used when such illegal activity is known independently of the cash transactions themselves? Your reasoning escapes me, as applied to cases like Hastert’s.
I’m interested in any response you have to Nony Nony’s coment (@NonyNony: ).
Edit: thanks for your reply to Nony Nony.
Major Major Major Major
pete
@scav: Thank you. GG had a piece about overreach, which he wrote before the details started to come out. Somehow he did not focus on that comparison, preferring to discuss dope and the gyrocopter guy. (He did briefly refer to “minorities.”) And in the Update, he’s all about busting Hastert for the “sexual misconduct” [quotes in original] which they almost certainly cannot prove, not the money laundering they can actually get him for.
[Al Capone, white courtesy phone]
kc
@jl:
I didn’t say that it did.
I already responded to Nony’s comment. I’d be interested in YOUR response.
Archon
If there were only one person that Hastert sexually abused 30 years ago I seriously doubt he would allow himself to be extorted for half of his net worth.
jl
@kc: I agree with Nony Nony. IANAL so am not expert in how these laws have been abused. You have a link that gives more info than I found in the Balko piece, I will read it.
I just don’t see how any of those misgivings affect a case like Hastert’s.
Karen in GA
@Zandar: Thank you. When I use it, I shall think of you and smile.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Life without parole? More than even the prosecutors recommended?
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Major Major Major Major:
Thanks. So what that means is this scumbag can only be prosecuted for molesting children if he’s kept it up all these years and there are young enough victims out there.
Major Major Major Major
They are using the tools available to catch a pedophile seemingly after the statute of limitations. There is nothing wrong with that; as they say, it’s a poor craftsman that blames the tools. To continue the metaphor, you can crack a skull with a hammer just as easily as you can drive in a nail, and sure, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to have the hammer since you have a history of cracking skulls instead of driving in nails, but this nail would have remained undriven without the hammer.
In other words, there’s nothing wrong with catching pedophiles by any means necessary, and this was their best bet. Without USA PATRIOT they could have maybe gotten him on unreported cash transfers via IRS statute or something, but this one’s better.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: I suppose I misread your comment. (I was walking at the time.) I thought you were saying some libertarian nonsense about the verdict being wrong, not the sentence.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Effectively, yes. And since he has been out of teaching and coaching since 1981, there have been fewer opportunities. I am sure details will start to spill out of the next couple of weeks.
rikyrah
Be logical.
Be phucking logical.
WHO DA PHUQ pays MILLIONS in blackmail if you didn’t do something?
Had to do with his life BEFORE he was in Congress?
When he was a HIGH SCHOOL COACH.
come on…
2+2 is still 4
the only question was whether the underaged minor THAT HE HAD SEX WITH…
was a boy or a girl.
THAT was the only thing in question.
And, if you think it’s only ONE, you are phucking delusional.
Valdivia
@eemom:
yep, SoL is expired for this case (and maybe Individual B or anyone from his time as a teacher), but may be alive for other cases if he has been actively doing it since then. Ugh.
As @Omnes Omnibus: says his opportunities may have been far and few after he stopped teaching. Maybe in Congress? The pages/interns?
At least as @Major Major Major Major: they have caught him for something else.
different-church-lady
@scav: If only Sanders had said something like that he’d still be a liberal in good standing.
eemom
Pedophiles do tend to be career criminals. It is, after all, a sickness.
jl
@Major Major Major Major: As I have said many times, IANAL, but I simply do not understand the entrapment, or Al Capone tax evasion, angle on this.
Maybe the law should be rewritten, but the law does cover cases that make sense: where it is knowingly violated.
Hastert was not going to defy the blackmailer, and he innocently stashed the cash in his attic to keep it away from the sketchy US banking system, that did not happen, right? And the blackmailer somehow magically ended up with it, or what?
Isn’t this the kind of case that prosecutors have to follow up, or they may find themselves being accused of selective enforcement, right? They can overlook some random small fry person person doing something similar with far smaller amounts of cash, but not what Hastert was doing. I agree that there is something troubling about going after some small businessman in financial trouble or medical weed user and combing through his records until you find out there is some unwitting technical violation.
But what does that have to do with what Hastert? Hastert was systematically moving relatively big time money (for an individual) over a long period of time. He damn well was in charge of Congress when they wrote the rules, wasn’t he.
What is it that IANAL me is not getting?
Valdivia
@jl:
For me at least is that they have no tools to prosecute him for some of his worse crimes so they got him for other crimes. even if we would like justice to get him for what he did to those (that?) young man. We know that they didn’t fabricate these charges to get him, just that they couldn’t get him for everything.
Mike J
@Gin & Tonic:
Hiring assassins should carry a significant penalty.
jl
@Valdivia: I am just puzzled by implications, from different ideological quarters, it seems, that this case was not worth following up on its own merits. I don’t know, but seems to me that hush money for the alleged past sexual misconduct and crimes were just the unknown reasons for the transfers. If it were not some details in the initiial news reports, I would have guessed the reason was some payoff, or tax avoidance, regarding his alleged corrupt real estate insider info deals when he was in Congress.
But the violations were so systematic, amounts so large over such a long period of time, and apparently quite knowingly in violation, given his wealth and who he was, why are there doubts about why the transfers should have been thoroughly investigated on their own merits?
Is all I am asking.
Valdivia
@jl:
oh I agree. The case, to my mind, was worth pursuing, even without the other crimes having been committed. No question. It just adds a sense of justice that at least he is not getting off free for crimes he cannot be prosecuted for.
Gin & Tonic
@Mike J: That part is not actually clear-cut, IMO.
scav
@Valdivia: From the indictment, it sounds like the bank(s) alerted the feds as per existing law to the existing suspicious pattern of money transfers (that they’d already talked to H about and he’d thereafter tried to disguise a bit), and then he lied to the feds about it and all the rest is somewhat incidental icing.
Mandalay
@jl:
Yes, and that became doubly true once Hastert lied to the investigators.
A former Speaker of the House took measures to bypass money laudering laws, then lied about it to the Feds. He may escape jail, but he has to be prosecuted.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: Under USA PATRIOT, large cash transactions have to be reported. It’s how the FBI noticed in the first place, after the bank mentioned it.
MaryRC
@NonyNony: Exactly. Republicans don’t even care if a politician makes his mistress get an abortion, as long as he votes anti-choice because that’s all that counts. See DesJarlais, Scott.
evodevo
@dedc79: Yeah, looks like Larry Flynt missed this one – he was responsible for digging up a lot of the dirt on the Repub hypocrites when they went for the Clinton impeachment thingy.
gogol's wife
@SRW1:
Oh boy, this sounds like Wolf Hall territory.
MomSense
I have some childhood friends who were victims of sexual abuse by a trusted adult and it has haunted them their whole lives. I hope the victims in this case are getting the support they need.
kc
@jl:
Speaking for me, I’m not saying that Hastert’s withdrawals should not have been investigated under existing law. That was appropriate. I was just pointing out what some people consider to be issues with the law itself.
gogol's wife
@trollhattan:
LOL
gogol's wife
@Bobby Thomson:
Right.
kc
And you know, normally on Balloon Juice we get angry when anonymous law enforcement sources selectively leak nonpublic info designed to help their case and tarnish an individual, but that goes out the window when we don’t like the individual.
Narcissus
@Keith P.: Don’t ruin gay sex for me dude
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): 35 to 40 years ago, in many states homosexual acts were flat-out illegal.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
That’s why I don’t believe it about Woody Allen.
Steeplejack
@Lavocat:
Well, I was going to go with Diana Ross, “Touch Me in the Morning,” but I don’t really like that song. I do like this retro take on the semi-appropriate “How Long Has This Been Going On.”
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: All of this stuff is either directly stated in the indictment or is reasonable supposition based on the indictment.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
You don’t like “Touch Me in the Morning”? How is that even possible?
heckblazer
@Mike J: That’s still being heard in state court in Baltimore though.
eemom
@gogol’s wife:
Agree. An asshole he may have been wrt the Soon Yi matter, but an asshole and a pedophile are two different things.
(Similar to how guys at a UVA frat could be rich, drunk assholes, but not be rapists…..but oh well, let’s not go there.)
srv
@jl: The Patriot Act was a long time ago, he certainly kept it going a long time w/o getting caught and those banking triggers didn’t blink.
Either the blackmailer pushed for too much, he got audited, or there was some other tip. Heck, I’d bet the wife would call it in watching the bank accounts drain.
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
You can speculate all you want and even call it a “reasonable supposition.” Even if your supposition is reasonable, it would be just one among many theories if not for the fact that the only reason we KNOW that the payoffs were related to alleged past misconduct of a sexual nature is because one ore more anonymous LE officials selectively leaked that info.
eemom
@gogol’s wife:
Agree again! But that might be a woman thing.
kc
@srv:
No, no, no. The bank likely reported the withdrawals.
Banks have to report transactions that appear to be “structured” to avoid reporting requirements. Then the feds would have investigated and gotten their ducks in a row, and Hastert was dumb enough to, allegedly, lie to the feds.
srv
@kc: jl said this had been going on a long time (IDK how long).
If bank triggers always worked, it would have been uncovered years ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: It was pretty clear from the language of the indictment.
jl
@kc: What makes you think that we now know stuff we did not very strongly suspect before the leak, other than what was in the indictment in the first place? In my mind it was what was written in the indictment that gives the anonymous leak much credibility at all.
I agree with you that these kind of anonymous leaks are unethical and they should not happen. But I am more concerned when they are used to defame, say, kids involved in some dubious police shooting, or, some small fry whom the prosecutor wanted to nail for something else, and then went combing over the bank records to find something.
The leak was wrong, but seems to me a case of somebody wanting to play bigshot insider to a reporter, rather than something more sinister. But I admit i could be mistaken.
Mandalay
@kc:
A fair point, especially since the indictment does not say anything about sexual misconduct. But I think it is possible that Hastert may have brought that leaking on himself by lying to the Feds.
We don’t know the details of Hastert’s discussions with them, but it is clear that he lied. He chose to fuck with them, so perhaps they decided to return the favor, and fuck with him.
kc
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, it wasn’t. The indictment makes no reference to sexual misconduct.
The reason not one single solitary news outlet reported that the payments related to past sexual misconduct from Hastert’s school tenure is because they had no basis to do so until an anonymous DOJ source leaked that info.
Until then, all you had was speculation and “supposition.”
Gopher2b
fwiw, I looked it up and the statute of limitations, err, blew.
kc
@Mandalay:
I’m not sure what you mean by that, but according to the indictment, yeah, Hastert lied to the feds about the withdrawals (said he was keeping the money). In fact that’s one of the things he’s being indicted for.
Gopher2b
@kc:
Prosecutors don’t just put irrelevant language in indictments. Him being a HS coach was relevant. It was obvious.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Elizabelle:
Or covered for him…
Can’t say I feel the least bit sorry for Dennis…
I’d say his current predicament is completely of his own making…
1. Do something completely avoidable and painfully stupid…
2. Try to buy your way out of it…
3. Then try to LOWBALL the solution…
4. Lie about it…
Dennis should get a tattoo that says…
kc
I’m out. Happy Friday night, all.
(Fyi, “The Third Man” is airing on TCM at 8 p.m. ET tonight)
kc
@Gopher2b:
They put his entire career in the indictment, but whatevs.
Like I said, it’s cool when it’s someone we don’t like. Hey, I don’t like Hastert either.
Good night, for real.
different-church-lady
@kc: At this point I’ve pretty much just given up on trying to say “can we wait for some kind of confirmation?” It’s just spitting into the wind.
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: And yet the leak did not tell me anything I hadn’t already understood from reading the indictment. But, yes, the leak was improper. I also repudiate the broccoli mandate.
scav
@Gopher2b: They also mentioned Yorkville explicitly for both individuals, and that something was done ‘against’ Individual A, so less likely to involve a dead body. (being blackmailed by a zombie, that would be a twist!) Very large cookie crumbs to jump up and down on given the amount of money flung about.
Mandalay
@kc: I was suggesting that maybe if Hastert had been cooperative with the Feds rather than lying to them, then they might not have leaked the nature of his misconduct. A bit like a traffic cop will let you off with a warning if you are respectful, but give you a ticket if you show some attitude.
Few know the details (if any) of what Hastert may have done to piss off the investigators. We don’t know the extent of his lies, and how much he may have wasted their time and yanked them around. Perhaps he was rude to them, or tried to pull rank. All we know for sure is that he lied to them. Of course none of that would justify the leaking, but it may explain why it happened.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: The leak was “improper”? A former Speaker of the House has been indicted, and for all anyone knows he was being blackmailed while in office. And face it- the republican party plays dirty- extremely dirty. It is the party of rule or ruin, and I mean that literally. The bastards are subverting our democracy before our very eyes every day of the week. Turnaround is fair play.
dogwood
@The Republic of Stupidity:
You are absolutely right. All Hastert had to do was follow the law and fill out the paperwork on the transfer of money. I doubt that the Feds would have even looked into it, and if they did, it is unlikely that the recipient of the cash is connected to international terrorism or big time drug trafficking. At that point there would have been no recourse for the Feds even if they suspected blackmail and sexual abuse. It would have been hard to prove and perhaps outside their jurisdiction.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: And the leak was still improper. The fact that, IMO, it did not give any new information, but merely confirmed what everyone already “knew” doesn’t change that. Prosecutors have rules that they are supposed to follow.
The Republic of Stupidity
@dogwood: Why didn’t he just cop to it behind closed doors and structure it as a personal injury settlement?
Part of the problem for Dennis here is the dumb solution to the problem in the 1st place…
Trying to cheap out after the fact and then lying to the Feds just compounds his problems…
Mandalay
@Tree With Water:
Of course; by definition, a leak is improper.
Now you can argue that the leak was reasonable and justified, but that is another kettle of fish.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: “Prosecutors have rules that they are supposed to follow”.
Oh, I know. I remember thinking the same when John Ashcroft ran the Justice Department. Remember? On orders from Bush-Cheney, he was busted for subverting it. The SOB couldn’t even find a job afterwards.
“Improper”. Give me a fucking break.
Gopher2b
@Tree With Water:
The leak was absolutely improper and likely a violation of 6(e) (GJ secrecy rule). It also endangers the prosecution of Hastert for the crimes he was indicted for.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: Are you suggesting that because Republican prosecutors chose not to follow the rules that no prosecutors should follow the rules?
scav
He’s really not exactly coming across as a deep or sophisticated plotter or thinker.
And I’m not at all comfortable with minimizing, let alone taking political glee in, the leaks either — too close to the “if our enemies torture then we can!” rule of justification.
Steeplejack
@gogol’s wife:
I like Ross’s earthier work with the Supremes. And I say that knowing that the Supremes were the least earthy of all the Motown acts. Ross’s solo career too often wallowed in overproduced treacle. Think Paul McCartney after the Beatles. On second thought, no, don’t.
ETA: “Touch Me in the Morning” isn’t a horrible song. I just think it’s kind of meh.
Major Major Major Major
All leaks are by definition improper, as stated above. But some are still good–Watergate, Pentagon Papers, etc.
This one was pointless sensationalism. Anybody with half a brain could tell this was pedophilia yesterday. Given that all the reports I read made sure to mention the wrestling coach thing, and pretty much nothing else in his past, this leak was probably known by some reporters yesterday too.
Steeplejack
@kc:
Thanks for reminding me! A Man for All Seasons is on TCM at 2:15 a.m. EDT tonight. That got a lot of discussion in the recent Wolf Hall threads.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: I tend to agree that the leak was wrong. What was also wrong, was changing the indictment in order to protect the pedophile.
gogol's wife
@Steeplejack:
I think her performance on it is superb.
fuckwit
Well like the old political saying, “dead girl or live boy”, in this case it was live boy. Exactly what many people here speculated it’d be.
Rethug projection once again, if he was a gay-bashing religious panderer.
The blackmail angle is weird, disturbing, and unfortunate. What Hastert did was illegal and immoral, and what his victim did in retailation was also illegal and immoral.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they both get prosecuted but only the victim gets jail time.
JPL
Is it possible that individual A, B and C received immunity? I hope so. I don’t think there is any amount of money that makes up for Hastert’s behavior. Coaches are suppose to be trustworthy.
David Koch
@gogol’s wife: it depends on what one mean by history of behavior.
He did have a “relationship” with a 16 year old girl when he was in his early 42s.
A middle age man with a girl who has to report to home room every morning and needs a hall pass to go to the restroom is pretty fucked up.
Tree With Water
@scav: I make no bones about it. I consider the republican party to be the party of American fascism, the party of rule or ruin. That’s not hyperbole, that is where it’s at. That political organization is my enemy. It is the enemy of our democracy. It is insulting to regard it as anything approaching an “honorable opposition”. It is no such thing. I say take no political prisoners.. I want that organization extinguished because it is a political force of evil. Lest We Forget (or remain adrift on a sea of denial), the republican party plotted war, and unleashed it. Tens of thousands slain, tens of thousands yet to perish as a consequence. By my lights, the word “enemy”, and all it connotes, is the perfect word to describe the republican party. It is the only word.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: This is about a criminal case, not political maneuvering.
Mike J
I don’t believe that if prosecutors never did anything bad to Republicans they’d stop trying to fuck over Democrats. In an ideal world, I’d prefer prosecutors obey the law. I don’t believe that will happen any time soon, and this piece of shit isn’t worth disturbing my beautiful mind over.
fuckwit
@Tree With Water: One of the unfortunate things about absolutism is that it breeds absolutism in opposition to it.
Often, it’s sadly true, one must engage in absolutism in order to extinguish it, but then, you by definition have to become as evil (or damn near close to it) as the evil you are trying to defeat, in order to defeat it, by going against it atrocity-for-atrocity (c.f. Holocaust and seige of Stalingrad leading to the leveling/firebombing/partitioning of Germany, and the Rape of Nanking and Bataan Death March etc leading to the firebombing of Tokyo and nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
The only way I’ve ever seen out of the trap of defeating evil by becoming more evil than it, is the path taken by Gandhi and MLK, which, alas, is unsatisying and slow and painful. But I don’t know any better alternatives.
I do, however, in this case, prefer to try letting the R’s self-destruct with consistent strategic MLK-ish help from us, rather than by us taking the same kind of absolutist/eliminationist tack with them. I think it’s better to let the wingnuts take over the party and horrify everyone, and let Americans back away from them slowly over time.
scav
@Tree With Water: It sounds more like you care about and will err on the side of winning by your team/party and put that over honor, professionalism and the good of the overall system. That’s not something I’m comfortable about or respect quite honestly. You deliberately mirror the worst excesses of “your enemy” and feel justified. I just see two camps now putting themselves and their battles over the overall system established. Oh goodie — two smug disruptive self-congratuative factions libel to encourage each other to still worse.
ETA: Hardball in the political realm? Sure – Tit for Tat. But this is different, this is structural to the functioning of the law and sits wrong. Right up there with international diplomacy in my book.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major:
No, I’ve seen references to his suspected Turkish bribes, which I’d forgotten about. He received large “donations” from small donors (no reporting necessary) and this was suspected to be from Turkish entities. After he quit (and after the “donations”) he became a lobbyist for said entities.
A priori I’d consider this MUCH more likely as a reason for large-scale blackmail than sex crimes 15 years past the statue of limitations.
Mike J
@scav: The overall system is already broken.
Fair Economist
@fuckwit:
Sorry, but leaking about a pedophile’s activities is not even vaguely morally close to starting a war under false premises and killing hundreds of thousands of innocents. Not even vaguely close to vaguely close to vaguely close.
Gin & Tonic
@Fair Economist: Alleged pedophile, maybe?
JPL
@Fair Economist: Agents and prosecutors are human and if it was a ongoing pattern of abuse, they were probably sickened that this guy got off with a 1.7 million payoff.
NCSteve
I’m late to the party here, but FWIW structuring is a pretty damn serious crime under federal law because it’s viewed as the handmaiden of all racketeering, drug crime, financial crime, terrorism, tax cheating, and, of course, money laundering.
As charged, if you don’t count the obstruction charge in any way, he’s looking at about three years under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: Yes, this is simple grandstanding by a prosecutor. Improper, but unfortunately not uncommon.
Mandalay
@Fair Economist:
What? I think you are burning the witch a bit too soon.
ETA: G&T beat me to it.
fuckwit
@Fair Economist: That wasn’t my equivalence. I dunno if it was yours, or you were actually replying to someone else’s comment by mistake.
My point is that I don’t like people speaking of eliminating the R’s at their own game, and by all costs and by any means necessary. I used to advocate that approach but I now believe it’s wrong. That kind of goal all but requires matching your enemy atrocity for atrocity. I’m opting out.
Fair Economist
@fuckwit: I wouldn’t use “all means necessary” to stop the Republicans – I wouldn’t resort to nuclear war, for example – but leaks? Have at it.
Omnes Omnibus
@fuckwit: @Fair Economist: The thing here, and the error that TWW fundamentally made, is that this is not about stopping Republicans. This is a simple criminal case.
Fair Economist
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, if you want to be legalistic – I didn’t mention Hastert in that particular post. It was purely an abstract point. Would I say Hastert was a pedophile?
(I didn’t say it there either!)
Still in favor of “most means necessary” to stop Republicans.
scav
@Mike J: Well, goody, once anything isn’t working perfectly, all bets are off and let’s have a freeforall rather than attempting to maintain and fix it.
Iowa Old Lady
Holy crap. The AP has identified Hastert as a Democrat.
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2015-05-28-10%20Things%20to%20Know-Friday/id-ab816cb64b174cdfa4eb7bb3d4034ad6
gocart mozart
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Wow, that would ramp this thing up to 11.
Valdivia
@Iowa Old Lady:
Of course, don’t you know any politician that does anything wrong is always a Democrat? /snark
Also, too. The AP, I find their ‘political’ reporting absolutely awful.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus:
No. A criminal case involving a top political individual is never a simple criminal case. It always has political implications, particularly with cases involving extreme hypocrisy and with an individual who’s been on both sides of *other* similar criminal cases involving other top politicians like Clinton and Foley.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: It is a simple criminal case in that it does not relate to his time in office or official duties. Of course, the fact that he is who is already coming into play.
Fair Economist
@CONGRATULATIONS!: OK, *that* could explain multimillion dollar blackmail.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: It’s really weird, because the only AP alumnus that I know is now John Kerry’s press guy.
Howard Beale IV
@JPL: I would be surprised if Individual A got immunity, for he clearly was committing a criminal act. And I would find it even more surprising if the identity of these individuals to continue to be sealed; especially if this thing goes to trial (which it probably won’t-but stranger things have happened.)
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ron “why can’t Obama lead” Fournier was the DC Bureau political director for quite a few years until he moved to The Hill or wherever he is at now. There is someone else there too, a woman reporter, who did just awful stuff during ACA and the first few years of this administration. Maybe it was just a few of them were bad since you mention Kerry’s guy. I confess I try not to read them so I don’t know if they got any better.
JPL
@Fair Economist: I said if he was and I stand by my comment. haha… I didn’t use alleged either. So g & T can correct my language.
When Denny was house leader, my far right brother was spouting about how honest he was and at the time, I said that something about his past him bothered me. I’m tempted to email him but I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: He was in my fraternity in college. He was always in and/or around Boston as a reporter. Maybe it is the DC crowd that has gone rotten.
JPL
@Howard Beale IV: Like you, I doubt it goes to trial. There will probably be a plea deal. I doubt that Denny wants anyone else to be charged because that allows the story to continue.
Gopher2b
@Howard Beale IV:
Meh. Demanding compensation for being injured Is not a criminal act. I haven’t seen anything to suggest Individual A was blackmailing.
And enough with the pedophilia. Sexual assault. Yes. Statutory rape. Yes. Creepy hypocritical asshole sure. But let’s reserve pedophilia for those that actually deserve it,* like the Duggards.
*At least until we know more.
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me. The DC crew seem to me to be the ones who are obsessed with the view from nowhere and the both sides do it narrative. It’s like a hothouse of bad habits.
Mandalay
@Howard Beale IV:
“clearly”???
Some conclusions are clearly being reached far too quickly in this thread.
Fair Economist
@Gopher2b: Yeah, in the more technical psychological terminology, sexually interaction between a high school teacher and a student is likely ephebophilia, not pedophilia, and yes they’re not morally equivalent. But when it’s discussed in the media in a legal context they always use pedophilia (or would this be pederasty?)
yodecat
Asshole! Why does the American voting public keep voting *real* perverts and sociopaths into public office? Democracy seems to be a hit-or-miss sorta thing I suppose. Damn. I think I’m going to lay off the news for a few weeks as I feel that learning these sorts of things are bad for my mental health. I need me some brain wash.
Omnes Omnibus
@yodecat: Fuckhead! Oh, you were referring to Hastert. Never mind. My apologies.
yodecat
@trollhattan: Hey, man, due to the Fortunes, I gots money. It’s not the money that’s beautiful (though I wish everyone had plenty) it’s what one might do with it.
I want a Star Trek world. I think that if we don’t blow ourselves up that it may be destiny.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay:
After observing the past couple of years of this joint, why would we expect anything different?
NonyNony
@Mandalay:
I think it’s far more likely that one or more of the team investigating him were just disgusted at the idea that he might not get called out on (at a minimum) taking advantage of an underaged teen student and leaked it. Your average rapist might get some sympathy from some quarters, but nobody really has much sympathy for pedophiles and would be somewhat outraged if it looked like they were going to get away with it without at least being called out in the court of public opinion. (I find it doubtful that Hastert will ever see a jail cell for any sexual abuse).
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: @Mandalay: Any contradictions here?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Dude, did I miss your repudiation of Stalin? I only say that you repudiate the broccoli mandate.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I thought it was implicit in the broccoli thing.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
If the accused is a republican, once a leadership 3rd in the succession, then it is politics. Dirty politics because of the dirty politician, mostly. The leaks aren’t gratuitous, they’re because the crimes were so monumental.
I will add that a man named “Mark Allen Collman” disappeared from this little Illinois town when he was 21. I wonder if he thought about talking about his “coach” and what coach did with him, what if he talked to someone about those thoughts?
So may be there is not only some live “boys” involved, but a very missing dead young man, removed while the statute of limitations was still alive. I wonder.
But I agree that the republicans are as anti-American a group as anything the KGB or the SS put together in the recent past. They are a combine planning to steal monumental amounts of money from retiring citizens!
They have already stolen vast amounts of pensions, insurance monies, mortgaged real property, everything that wasn’t nailed down too tightly has been stolen. This is part of why the middle class is missing – their net worth has been stolen by operatives of ALEC and the republican party.
And these political operatives will tell any lie and spin any story to damage the Democratic Party. They even describe republicans who have been busted for flagrantly illegal and immoral acts as Democrats on their TV spots! Now if it was me on the FCC, any station that posted anything like that would be off the air the next day, or at least once I had accumulated enough of those cases to make a dent in the poisonous web operated by the co-conspirators of the republican party.
Mr. Hastert broke significant banking laws and regulations, then lied about it. He should have, could have structured the payments as payments from a business deal, employment, poker winnings, hell, hired for sex? I’m glad he didn’t attempt such a smokescreen, as it would have made the issue more clouded. Still guilty, but harder to pin down, less obvious to all not part of the republican conspiracy to ruin democracy in America.
What a good thing for yet another republican leader to bite the big one, live boys, dead boys, or at least missing boys. These guys are so obviously evil, I wonder how anyone not at least as evil is taken in at all.
J R in WV
And now my long comment, with no.. no I spoke of card dealing winnings as a way to conceal the purpose of the payments… that’s the problem. Moderated, please release me, release me if you please.
Mandalay
@NonyNony:
You may be right – I was just speculating. Ironically, the leak may have helped Hastert a tiny bit, coming before the weekend. If the nature of the misconduct had not been leaked the sordid speculation may have reached fever pitch on the Sunday talk shows. (He’s completely fucked either way of course.)
J R in WV
@yodecat:
Dude, I use bourbon for brain wash. Good whisky, single barrel, high proof with branch water. Russel’s, or Buffalo Trace, or, well there’s a lot of them.
Sometimes you feel down the next morning, but the dirty feeling in your head isn’t from the news. It’s from the hangover, if you brain washed too much.
Joel
@Gin & Tonic: There’s no way that sentence stands on appeal. That said, I’d be hard pressed to argue that he deserves anything less than ten years.
Joel
@Mandalay: Fuck that. This isn’t the court of law. There’s acreage of smoke to this forest fire.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: And it is still a criminal case against one defendant; it is not a case against a political party or ideology. Whatever it may portend for the party or ideology.
Mandalay
@Joel:
Fuck what? If “if Individual A…clearly was committing a criminal act” then what was that criminal act, and what is the evidence?
There is nothing that clearly shows Individual A was doing anything illegal at this stage. Maybe, maybe not, but asserting it as factual is absurd.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: This isn’t a court of law. In my professional life, I need to be careful about many of these terms. OTOH, when I am not around a court I may well say that someone was guilty of some infraction even though a competent court has not, and may not, make a ruling. One may have an opinion. Yes?
Kerry Reid
@NonyNony: How can you say that?!? Don’t you remember former Senator David Vitter?
fuckwit
@NonyNony: That’s because they worship business, and business is corrupt, so of course politics is just business continued by other means. R’s have zero problem with billionaires straight up buying candidates. It’s just business! Citizens United is legalized bribery. They’re not even trying.
Only if you care about one person, one vote, do you care about corruption. Democrats care. Rethugs simply do not care, and there’s little daylight between “one dollar, one vote” and bribery and corruption. To them, the government is just an obstacle to business.
burnspbesq
@Valdivia:
There is another possibility. Not every crime is a Federal crime. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the underlying bad acts are crimes under Illinois, but not Federal, law, and it’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that an elected county prosecutor in Illinois would pass on a prosecution that has no upside for his/her ability to get re-elected.
As my brother who lives in suburban Chicago said when the story broke, “on the Illinois Political Corruption Scale, this a two, or maybe at most a three.”
sukabi
@Mandalay: read somewhere that Individual A wouldn’t likely be charged, because Hastert would have to make a complaint as the victim…
brantl
@satby:
I don’t know what they’re bitching about, they just did!