The longest-serving Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, passed away on Monday, according to CBS News, which cited an Illinois coroner. Hastert later acknowledged to sexually assaulting boys while coaching high school wrestling and entered a guilty plea to charges stemming from the controversy.
Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell informed CBS News that Hastert, who was sentenced to 15 months in jail in April 2016 for bank fraud for attempting to conceal payments to conceal his molestation, passed away at home over the weekend from natural causes.
Known to his friends as “Denny,” Hastert led the lower house of Congress from January 1999 to January 2007 under the administrations of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, making him one of the most influential leaders in the United States. Although his leadership style exacerbated partisan division in Congress, the muscular conservative from the Midwest was seen as a friendly legislator.
Eight years after he left the House, information concerning his sexual assault of students while working as a coach and civics teacher at Yorkville High School in suburban Chicago from the 1960s to the early 1980s came to light, destroying his reputation.
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