The former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Dennis Hastert, who spent more than a year in prison for financial crimes related to sexual abuse of minors, has died at the age of 84 at his home in Plano, in the state of Illinois. According to the office of the Kendall County coroner, the death occurred from natural causes while he was receiving palliative care.
The head of that office, Jacquie Purcell, explained that, after reviewing the circumstances of the death and coordinating with the healthcare staff who attended to him at home, the authorities concluded that a formal investigation was not necessary nor the direct intervention of the coroner, so the official certification of death was left in the hands of his primary care physician.
Hastert presided over the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, becoming the Republican who has held that position for the longest consecutive time in the history of the country. During those eight years, he played a prominent institutional role as an ally of then-President George W. Bush, supporting the passage of key laws following the September 11, 2001 attacks and backing the military involvement of the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also promoted the so-called "Hastert Rule," which consisted of not bringing any legislative initiative to a vote that did not have the majority support of his own Republican group.
Some time after leaving the political front line, his public career was tarnished by a judicial scandal that destroyed his institutional prestige. In 2015, he was accused of financial crimes for trying to circumvent federal banking controls in order to make million-dollar payments intended to silence sexual abuses committed decades earlier against minors when he worked as a teacher and wrestling coach at a high school. In 2016, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison in a ruling in which the judge described him as a "serial child abuser," and he served 13 months in a federal prison before being released on supervised release.