Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Dies at 84

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert died this weekend far from the public spotlight he once dominated. The New York Times reports that Hastert, who rose from an Illinois high school wrestling coach to become the longest-serving Republican to hold the gavel, died over the weekend at age 84 of natural causes, according to local officials in Kendall County, Ill. Hastert was speaker from 1999 to 2007, notes ABC7.

Hastert's legacy is now inseparable from the scandal that followed him after he left office. In 2016 he was sent to federal prison, not for the sexual abuse he admitted committing against teenage boys he coached in the 1960s and '70s, but for structuring nearly $1 million in bank withdrawals to secretly pay one of his victims. A judge labeled him "a serial child molester." The Times obituary walks through his improbable rise during the Clinton impeachment saga, his role in the post-9/11 era and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the so-called "Hastert rule" that shaped House strategy, and the ethical controversies that shadowed his speakership and helped bring down the GOP majority. Read the full obituary in the New York Times.