June 01--Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday at the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago on charges he agreed to pay $3.5 million to a longtime acquaintance to cover up wrongdoing in his past and then lied to the FBI when asked about the suspicious cash withdrawals from several banks.
The hearing was set for 10 a.m. Thursday before U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, according to the judge's clerk. No attorney has yet filed an appearance on behalf of Hastert, the clerk said.
Hastert will enter a plea to the charges and likely be released on his own recognizance, according to a bond order entered last week.
Hastert, 73, of Plano, was charged last week with one count each of structuring currency transactions to evade 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 upon conviction.
The stunning indictment of the longtime Republican powerhouse alleged that he gave about $1.7 million in cash beginning in 2010 to a longtime acquaintance, identified as Individual A in the charges, to "compensate for and conceal (Hastert's) prior misconduct" against Individual A from years earlier.
Individual A was described in the charges as having lived previously in Yorkville, where Hastert worked as a high school teacher and wrestling coach from 1965 to 1981. The individual has known Hastert "most of Individual A's life," the indictment said.
While details of the relationship and Hastert's alleged wrongdoing were not provided, several law enforcement sources have said that Hastert was paying off a man to conceal sexual abuse from the time Hastert taught and coached at Yorkville High School.
One law enforcement official said Individual A had been a student at the school but did not know if he was on the school's wrestling squad coached by Hastert. Agents spoke with a second person who raised similar allegations of abuse against Hastert, the official said, but investigators didn't find any "pattern of payments" to that person by Hastert.
"But the case is still going on," the official said.
According to the indictment, from June 2010 to April 2012 Hastert made 15 withdrawals of $50,000 each from bank accounts he controlled and paid Individual A that cash about every six weeks.
After bank representatives questioned Hastert about the transactions in 2012, he began illegally structuring the cash withdrawals in increments of less than $10,000 to evade bank reporting requirements in a bid to conceal his hush payments, the indictment said.
Between July 2012 and December 2014, Hastert made in excess of 100 withdrawals, all less than $10,000 each, the indictment charged.
Those withdrawals totaled about $952,000 in cash, prosecutors alleged.
When questioned by FBI agents in December about the withdrawals, Hastert said he was trying to store cash because he didn't feel safe with the banking system, according to the charges.
"Yeah ... I kept the cash. That's what I'm doing," Hastert was quoted as saying to the agents.
jmeisner@tribpub.com
