Overview
- The Kendall County Coroner’s Office confirmed late Monday that Hastert, 84, died at his Plano, Illinois, home while under hospice care and that the office did not assume jurisdiction, leaving certification to the attending hospice physician.
- Hastert represented northern Illinois in the U.S. House from 1987 until his 2007 resignation and served as Speaker from 1999 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican to hold that post.
- Federal investigators opened a probe in 2013 into large cash withdrawals and Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to violating banking laws by structuring transactions to conceal payments; he was sentenced in 2016 to 15 months in prison, served about 13 months, paid fines, and entered sex‑offender treatment.
- During court proceedings Hastert acknowledged sexually abusing teenage boys he coached decades earlier, prosecutors outlined multiple victims and U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin called him a “serial child molester.”
- Hastert’s conviction erased much of his public legacy: institutions stripped honors, his Capitol portrait was removed, and his death closes a chapter that transformed how survivors, courts and Congress reckon with misconduct by senior officials.