John Dennis Hastert is an American former politician and convicted felon. He served as the 51st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007. After being convicted of financial crimes related to paying hush money to cover up repeated incidents of child molestation, he became the highest-ranking elected official in U.S. history to have served a prison sentence. He is of Luxembourgish and Norwegian descent on his father’s side, and of German descent onhis mother’s.
About Dennis Hastert in brief
John Dennis Hastert is an American former politician and convicted felon. He served as the 51st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007. After being convicted of financial crimes related to paying hush money to cover up repeated incidents of child molestation, he became the highest-ranking elected official in U.S. history to have served a prison sentence. In court submissions filed in April 2016, federal prosecutors alleged that HasterT had molested at least four boys as young as 14 years of age during his time as a high school wrestling coach. At a sentencing hearing, Hastern admitted that he had sexually abused boys whom he had coached. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison, two years’ supervised release, and a USD 250,000 fine. In October 2015, he entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the structuring charge ; the charge of making false statements was dropped. In January 2016, he was imprisoned in 2016 and was released 13 months later. He is of Luxembourgish and Norwegian descent on his father’s side, and of German descent onhis mother’s. He became a born-again Christian as a teenager, during his sophomore year of high school. In 1964, he graduated from Wheaton with a B. A. in economics. In 1967, he received his M. S. in philosophy of education from Northern Illinois University. He began working as a teacher at Yorkville Community School District 115 for 16 years, from 1965 to 1981. In his first year of graduate school, he spent three months in Japan as part of the People to People Student Ambassador Program.
At 23, while still attending NIU, he began working by York County Community Unit 115 as a community school teacher and football coach. In 1976, he led the school’s wrestling team to the state championship. In 1978, he won the state title and was later named Illinois Coach of the Year. In 1980, he lost a 1980 bid for the Illinois House of Representative, but ran again and won a seat in 1981. He represented Illinois’s 14th congressional district from 1987 to 2007, and was re-elected every two years until he retired in 2007. He rose through the Republican ranks in the House, becoming chief deputy whip in 1995 and Speaker in 1999. In 2007, he declined to seek the position of minority leader, resigned his House seat, and became a lobbyist at the firm of Dickstein Shapiro. In 2008, after the Democrats took control of the House in 2007 following the 2006 elections, he left the firm to become a lobbyist. In 2010, he married his long-time girlfriend, former Illinois House Speaker Carol Costello. In 2011, he announced that he would not seek re-election to the House again. In 2012, he retired from the House after serving two terms as Speaker. In 2013, he wrote a book about his experiences as the longest-serving Republican Speaker in House history. He also served as a Boy Scout volunteer with the Post 540 Post 540 of Yorkville for 17 years.
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