Dennis Hastert, whose rise to U.S. House speaker in 1999 was as unexpected as the criminal conviction that sullied his reputation and sent him to prison years later, has died. He was 84.

He died at his home in Illinois over the weekend of natural causes, CBS News reported, citing Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell.

Once among America’s most powerful leaders as the longest-serving Republican speaker ever, Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to evading bank reporting laws as part of a scheme to buy the silence of a former student he sexually abused. Prosecutors alleged that Hastert abused at least four male students between the ages of 14 and 17 when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach at a high school outside Chicago.

Some of the athletes he coached “looked up to me, and I took advantage of them,” Hastert said in a statement in court.

In delivering Hastert’s punishment, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Durkin said, “Nothing is more stunning than to have the words ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence,” according to the Associated Press.

Durkin sentenced Hastert to 15 months in prison, fined him $250,000 and ordered that he be registered as a sex offender upon his release. Hastert served 13 months in prison before being released in 2017 to a Chicago halfway house to fill out the remaining two months of his sentence.

In 2021, Hastert settled a civil lawsuit filed by his accuser in the matter of the alleged payoffs.

Hastert’s evasion of bank reporting laws involved how he withdrew almost $1 million from bank accounts to carry out an agreement to pay $3.5 million in hush money to a former student. By taking out his money in increments under $10,000, he skirted laws requiring banks to report large withdrawals to the government. Under U.S. criminal law, that’s known as structuring.

The nickname “coach” had followed Hastert through his political career since he first won a congressional seat in 1986, following a stint as a state lawmaker.

He became known as the “accidental speaker” for his swift and surprising ascension to the top job in the House of Representatives, which put him second in the line of succession to the presidency, behind only the vice president.

As speaker from 1999 to 2007, Hastert helped oversee passage of President George W. Bush’s expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs and the congressional responses to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

‘Hastert rule’

Hastert’s speakership also was marked by partisanship, diminishing input from the opposition. An informal policy known as the “Hastert Rule” described his practice of not allowing a floor vote on legislation unless it had been approved beforehand by more than half of House Republicans — a “majority of the majority.”

Republicans lost their majority, and Hastert his speakership, when Democrats won the House in the 2006 midterm elections. Democrats were helped by allegations that Hastert and other Republican leaders had been slow to respond to reports that one of their members, Mark Foley of Florida, had sent sexually suggestive messages to teenage congressional pages.

“Eventually, you get enough barnacles, and you sink,” National Journal quoted Hastert as saying in a 2014 interview, referring to the difficulties a political party leader has in keeping voters happy.

He formally relinquished the gavel to Nancy Pelosi — the first woman to become speaker — when Democrats took control of the House in January 2007. Hastert left Congress later that year, eventually joining Washington lobbying firm Dickstein Shapiro LLP as a senior adviser.

Three years later, in 2010, Hastert allegedly agreed to the hush-money payments that would eventually land him behind bars.

Following his conviction, his official portrait was removed from the decorative lobby outside the House chamber where recent former speakers are honored.

John Dennis Hastert was born on Jan. 2, 1942, in Aurora, Illinois, to Jack Hastert and the former Naomi Nussle. His father was a farm supply dealer and restaurant owner.

He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1964 and a master’s degree in philosophy of education from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, three years later, according to his biography on the Congress website.

Teaching career

From 1964 to 1980, Hastert taught history and government while coaching football and wrestling teams at Yorkville High School, 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

“It was a small school where you taught everything and drove the school bus when you needed to,” he said in a 2014 interview with the Penn Political Review.

He married his wife, Jean, in 1973. They would have two children, Joshua, who has worked as a lobbyist, and Ethan, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for his father’s former House seat in 2010.

As president of the National Wrestling Coaches Group, Hastert became interested in politics in 1978 while lobbying Congress on amateur-sports legislation that gave wrestling Olympic designation. Struggling to support a family on his teacher’s wage, Hastert decided to run for a state seat.

He served in the Illinois General Assembly from 1980 until 1986, when he won election to the U.S. House.

His first dozen years in Congress proved mostly unremarkable, at least to the public eye. In reality, he was quietly climbing the political ladder, through close allegiances with past Republican leaders such as Robert Michel and Tom DeLay. By the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994, led by Newt Gingrich, Hastert was firmly inside the inner circle of party leaders, serving as deputy whip, or the No. 2 Republican vote-counter.

The events that landed Hastert in the speaker’s chair began when Republicans performed poorly in the 1998 midterm elections, during the second term of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Though Republicans maintained a slim majority, they suffered a net loss of five seats. Gingrich gave in to pressure to step down. Then his nominated successor, Bob Livingston of Louisiana, was forced to step aside following revelations of an extramarital affair.

Hastert became the default choice of party leaders. “People spend their whole lives aiming to be speaker; my speakership came in two minutes,” Hastert said, according to the National Journal article.

He was speaker through four consecutive two-year Congresses. His eight-year run broke the record for Republican speakers long held by Joseph Cannon, also of Illinois, who held the post from late 1903 to early 1911.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.