Part One: Dennis Hastert: The Longest-Serving Republican Speaker of the House

(upbeat music) - Cool, sir, media. - Welcome back to Behind the Basterds, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And to talk about a very special piece of shit who sadly has recently, not so sadly, has recently departed this mortal coil, we have someone who's still alive, the great Miles Gray. Welcome back to Show Miles. Congratulations on being alive, unlike our subject today. - How are you doing? - Thank you, thank you, I'm great, I'm great. Thank you so much for having me back. I love being on the show. I love the anxiety that I feel prior to you telling me who we're gonna talk about. And this is really the best part of the show is, I'm just trying to figure out what, how dark, how dark are we going today? Who are we on? What rocks are we turning over to the day together? - Sitting with Bated Breath to hear the name of our subject this week, which I should probably just give you now. This week we're talking about Dennis Hasterd. - Oh, Dennis Hasterd, the disgrace speaker of the house. - Dennis, the longest serving Republican speaker of the house. - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. - Maybe show us a thing or two of the darkness. - Showed a few people a thing or two. - Yeah. - Speaking of show, I guess, things, do you wanna tell people about the several podcasts you host? - Yeah, before we talk about this pedophile Miles. - We're doing that, how are you doing? - Yeah, we like to talk about disgrace pedophile speaker of the house, Danny Hasterd. - I mean, with behind the bastards, we like to get the plugs in up top because by the end, people are a little bummed. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Let's see, if you like, there's three shows. If you like daily news and politics, I used to be a lobbyist and then I gave up because I became so jaded that I just wanted to be funny. Check out the daily zeitgeist. I do that every day with Jack O'Brien. If you like 90 day fiancee, I do that with Sophia Alexandra, who's been on this show a few times. That's called 420 Day fiancee. And also, I just started talking recently about my favorite sport, which is the premier league English soccer football. That's a show, a new show called Ain't It Fuddy. And that's with Jamel Johnson, Chris Martin. - Yeah, yeah. - I have no alliance in that league, so I just root for Arsenal for you. - Thank you. And so that's why I know you're one of the decent people out here broadcasting. Thank you, you're blind allegiance to my soccer team. - Yeah. - Yeah, I got your bag. - This is an I Heart Podcast. - Guaranteed human. - In 1986, a man named Scott McLean was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. - I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're gonna figure out this is not me, they're gonna do their police job. - Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to examined the Backfire Effect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Now, Miles, you mentioned that you used to be a lobbyist. We're gonna be talking a lot about lobbyists today, 'cause one of the things Dennis Haster did was kind of revolutionize how congressmen were corrupt vis-a-vis lobbyists. Or at least he was part of a wave of that. But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I noted, Dennis, you called him Denny. So did all of his friends. Every article you find about him will know that his friends called him Denny. - That was Denny, yeah, yeah. - Dennis Haster was the longest serving Republican speaker of the house. He was in office from 1999 to 2007. So basically, pretty close to the entirety of the Bush years. That's not the only thing he was though. As some, but not all of the obituaries after his October 3rd, 2026 death noted, he was also a serial child molester. In between those two points, he played a key role in advancing the cause of corruption in Congress and making partisan bickering even worse. And he also did a bunch of other shitty stuff. Like, you're gonna be, there's so much other bad stuff, not just the pedophilia in the Dennis Haster story. You know, that's the promise I have for you. - Thank you for that guarantee. I appreciate it. - Welcome in his 2004 autobiography, Haster's autobiography, which was titled "Speaker, Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics." Haster opens chapter one, "Just Call Me Denny" with a quote from Lewis Carroll, the author of "Alice in Wonderland," who also had a hobby of taking naked pictures of little girls. He's not known to have molested anyone, but it's very likely he was in love with Alice Little, the inspiration for Alice from the book, "Enter Sister." Alice was 11 when they broke contact. And that's not super relevant, but just given that's about a decade after this autobiography comes out, Haster is exposed to this, a child muster is like, "Oh, okay." Interesting quote to open your book with there, of all of the people. - He's like, yeah, the pull quote on the back was from Arkelli. He was a real wild book roll out here. - Was he a big Lolita fan? - No, but that was not his, I mean, he picked a very different gender in terms of his predation. So maybe Lolita didn't have what he was looking for. Oh no. So John Dennis Haster, I guess you could call him a JD, was born on January 2nd, 1942, which he notes in his autobiography, was right around when the Japanese took Manila and the New York Times announced the start of war rationing in the United States. He was born seven pounds, 11 ounces, and his aunt declared him a chubby baby. He's gonna be a bigger guy his whole life. - Seven pounds, 11 ounces is so normal. What are we doing? - We're talking right at the end of the Great Depression. - All right, that's big. That's big for a baby in a country where we wanted to be starving very recently. - Dennis was the first of three sons. The Haster family moved to the United States from Luxembourg in the 1860s, making the accurate prediction that the next 80 years or so of European history would be better off avoided. The family lived in the Chicago area for a while, but moved to the Illinois countryside by the time Dennis was born. His parents met in Joilette and his dad became an embalmer and did that job until 1940, about two years before Dennis was born. At that point, he moved to Aurora, Illinois and started a farm supply store. His dad's gonna go through a few businesses. They'll run when Danny is a teenager. He'll work at his dad's restaurant, right? His father is a workaholic and seldom home. So when he's a very little kid, he's mostly his mom, Naomi, who is kind of in charge of things. They have a small four-laker farm in Oswigo, Illinois. The war years made little impression on a boy so young. He's like three when the war ends. And his first solid memories would have been the postwar boom that ran from the late 1940s on through the '50s. Once Dennis was old enough to help his dad, he went with him on delivery missions all over the area and their unheeded 1936 truck to drop off like feed for livestock. Haster fell in love with old trucks as a result of this. And he's going to collect antique fire trucks and shit later in life. He talks about that stuff all the time. I don't find it particularly interesting next to the other things he does. He writes in his autobiography, which was published during the height of his career before any scandals hit. And one of the things that's interesting about it is that there's bits and it that might be true and are probably at least partly true, but they're also clearly framed and crafted to make a political point because he's a Republican writing his autobiography while he's still the speaker of the house. So like, these anecdotes shouldn't be seen as like literally what happened, but what Dennis thinks is like thought was like politically handy for you to believe happened in his life. So here's one of those stories. I'm not going to give you an allowance, dad said when I was in the third grade, but if you want to earn some money, I'm going to give you 20 chickens. You have to take care of them every day. We had a little hen house and the chickens were mine. I went to pick up those eggs three times every day. I could sell them for about 30 cents a dozen and in a few extra bucks each week. When you collected eggs, the chickens would peck at you. Bravery for a kid I decided then was sticking your hand in a chicken's nest, knowing she's going to peck at you three or four times and extracting the egg without breaking it. And I've had chickens. I don't know why he's getting attacked so much by them. I mean, like that's not like a necessary part of the chicken process. Your vibes are so bad that even chickens are like, get the fuck away from me somehow. I don't say, yeah, I love this like myth, self-mythologizing two of us. And it didn't matter. I persevered. I got a win in there and stole their young for commerce. My dad wouldn't give me, wouldn't give me an allowance. I don't take handouts. You know, he taught me to work for my money for my right. I got pecked three to four times. Yeah, they have. He writes that I don't know how big this farm gets because he repeatedly says that like the family didn't have much, but they, you know, they had enough. But also he mentions vaguely at one point that like in addition to the chickens, he was taken care of. They had like a thousand other chickens, which is like a sizeable number of chickens. That's like a lot of, like you would be getting pecked. So I'm just by sheer volume of chickens. Yeah, yeah. There's some bad eggs in there. Yeah, Dennis also helped, yeah, that was good. Dennis also helped bail hay and knew most of the other farm chores that you would expect from a farm kid. His political interest was minimal as a youth. His family seems to have been fairly comfortable. He claims they didn't have time for vacations. And then immediately after that, describes a week-long vacation they took. He also, there's a couple of weird passages like that where he talks about how we didn't have much money. You know, we never got new things and he talks about his dad getting him a new bicycle. And I think he was trying to be like, this was the one time it happened, but just the way he wrote it. It's just very like that. You just said you didn't have this. Yeah, aside from you saying we didn't have much, everything else says you had much. Yeah, yeah. I don't know about much, but he's like a middle class, right? They're not like-- Or in the sense of like the descriptions of his childhood betray just sort of like the broad statements of being like, you know what I mean? - Right, yeah, and it's very quickly within those like, we didn't go on vacations. Here's a vacation we went on. - Right, right. - Most of the profiles of Dennis and newspapers and magazines read something like this line from a 2008 article on him in the Daily Herald quote, "Hastard became a boarden again Christian as a teenager." You hear that a lot, then when he's a teen he has this like moment and he gives himself up to Jesus. Obviously like, that's not impossible to believe, but the actual story he gives for how he got converted to Christianity as a kid who was born and raised as a Christian. Right, before and again means that it really stuck this time, right? - No, not swear, like I got way more into as a teenager. - Yeah, I super got into Jesus now. But the specific story he gives feels like it was crafted by a consultant. I have trouble buying it. I was a pretty serious kid and in my early teenage years, I can remember feeling a great uneasiness. I was just unsettled and needed to have something happen to me. Sure enough, it did. We were in a cabin by a lake camping out overnight. Some kids might have produced a six pack of beer or a pack of cigarettes. My friend, Jarman, pulled out a Bible. Suddenly, I had a yearning to accept Christ as my savior. And I did. Almost instantly, my uneasiness disappeared. Later, I joined Jarman at the Claim Street Baptist Church in Aurora, whereas parents sang in the choir. This experience isn't something I discuss publicly, but it really changed my life. And again, brought up in every interview like about this life. And also just like, oh yeah, the beer that really made you like fear for your soul and you had to accept Jesus. Yeah. I just wanted to do like 100% written by a consultant just in the description of the things that he rejected. It's like, I'm surprised it was like, they had beers, cigarettes, and a copy of Das Kapital. And I said, no. Yeah, the communist, the besto was the best, dude. I will choose the Bible. Oh, you don't know this, Miles, but back in the 50s and early 60s, every six or a Schlitz came with a copy of the communist manifesto. It was a weird marketing promo to be honest. Yeah. Worked on some people. Yeah. Anyway, we know his parents were not supposed to be like crazy religious, but they went to church. He was going to church from a young age. So I think this, I don't know of how much I believe this is the moment that he gave his soul up to God or if he was just like looking for an explanation that sounded better than, well, I've just always been Christian, right? Yeah. Which I think is more accurate. You definitely get points for being like, no, and then I actually made, it wasn't just by default that I became a Christian. Yeah. I intentionally chose at this age in my life. But also for me, like I remember growing up and the kids that like kind of like were fitting the mold of born again. They were just like horny for some like girl in the church youth group. So they just started going to church youth group. And then one thing turned to another and then they're like, actually, I've been I'm part of the board now. Yeah. So maybe that's, I don't know, maybe there was some other reason, but it sounds like it sounds like bullshit anyway, just to be like, yeah, I re-upped my Christianity as a teenager. And his friend, Tom Jarman, who is the guy he says brought the Bible out in lieu of the beer, doesn't give that, like gives a very different story in that interview with the Daily Herald. Everybody worked said, Jarman, they talk about the 50s being innocent, hell, there wasn't any time to get in trouble. I don't think there was anything virtuous in not drinking in high school. We just didn't have the time. And so the way his friend is like, that Bible story, no, we just literally didn't that we were all working all the time. What are you talking about? He's like, he takes a story about how he can smoke the most cigarettes and drink the most beer out of any kid we knew, I don't know, never mind him. Oh, man. So about the most exciting moment of Haster's teenage years was the time his dad got him nine pigs to raise for a 4-H fair and he says his hogs grew into the largest pigs in the competition and he should have won, but then he gets fucked out of it. And here's how he just explains that in his autobiography. A 4-H leader from Yorkville, Illinois jumped up. My pigs were too big, he objected. They couldn't have been born when I claimed they were. Therefore, they didn't deserve first place. The judge heard him out and dropped me down to fourth place. My dad was outraged. And he claims this is when he first learned about like political influence. I don't know. I can't say Dennis cheated, right? I have no idea. I will say he's going to grow into a professional liar, cheat and child molester. So maybe the guy from the 4-H club in Yorkville was on to something. Yeah, yeah. And to the point where like even the judges, like we're just like, hmm, it's not like there was like a whole lobbying effort. They're like, the guy is paying for the judges on RV. And that's why he's on his side. This isn't a horror like Crow situation. Yeah, you're right. Or pigs don't get this big. Yeah. This, this fast. The guy goes, yeah, how would you say this was? One years old. Yeah. No fucking way, dude. No, no, you're full of shit. Um, his cheat and torrent. I like that his that the takeaway for him is like, so that's politics. So that's how politics works, how to fucking cheat, but then make sure you don't get caught or changing the rules around when you brought a five-year-old pig to the fucking company. That is how politics works. Yeah. Um, his chief mentor at school was the football coach, Ken Pickerel, who Dennis called the most influential person in his early life. Haster had also gotten to wrestling, which Ken coached as well as football. But during his junior year, he suffered a shoulder separation that would hurt him for years. He had surgery several times and it got infected, but he still played on it. You know, it's one of those stories about like, I was injured, but I kept playing in his autobiography. Dennis used this to argue that students who complain about getting injured during sports are cowards. I learned from the experience that when bad things happen, don't complain. Wow. Which is again, quite a sentence from a guy who has a coach molested his students. Hmm. Right. Dennis. Jim hints in 2004. When Haster graduated high school, he and his best friend Tom Jarman were accepted to Wheaton College. One day, during finals week, Dennis and Jarman were screwing around in boxing, something Jarman's parents forbade him to do. Haster got his nose broken, so they covered up the boxing gear and went to the doctor. Jarman claims Haster made their physician promise not to tell. I mean, Denny was quoting the law to this guy. And that's interesting too, that even this young, with at least so far, it seems like zero interest in politics and presumably no crimes under his belt, although, you know, we don't really know. Young Dennis knows the law well enough to be prepared to use it as a threat against a medical professional to cover up that he was doing something he wasn't supposed to do. That's like a really kind of telling moment for him. Yeah. Well, how does he there? He's like 18 maybe like you can see how like he's learning how to course. You know, right? Yeah. Okay, there are ways to like even make a doctor do something, but I sure like to know what that weapon is. Yeah. And he's willing to do it on the doctor. He's not going to be willing to do it on his mom per 1999 Chicago Tribune article by Bob Kimper. The boys paid cash. So no bill would be sent home, but months later, a bill did arrive. A clerk had made a mistake. Jarman and Haster were in the kitchen table when Naomi Haster turned to them. She said, I know that if something happened and I asked you about it, you wouldn't lie. Would you? Jarman recalled. And I said, no, Miss Haster, if you had asked, we wouldn't have lied. Then she looked at Denny and it was all over. He just blurted it out. Right? So he's going to learn to be a better liar. That's it. That's his character actor is the story. It's also again, always at a very early age thing about how do I cover up the evidence from this? I got to make sure they don't send me a bill. That's also going to be something we'll hear about in part two to try to cover up a bill. We're seeing a lot of like a version to accountability, just developing a very distinct way. Yeah. Great example of what you do in good screen writing, right? You drop little hints and then you pay or little little teasers and then you pay them off in the last act, right? And that's the Dennis Haster story, very well written. During this period, all Wheaton College students had to sign a pledge. Wheaton is like a super conservative evangelical university. All the students had to sign a pledge and promise not to smoke, drink, gamble, dance or watch movies. And I love that old time machine, no dancing or watching a movie. Dancing or movie watching, period. I actually looked in these rules were initially that out in 1860. And they also for like students had to pledge to avoid quote propagating infidel principles. But we, man, it's been a while since I've heard of like evangelical Christians using the word infidel. That's a fun little, little slice of history right there. How do they mean that they're just any sort of out and influence that is on an influence that's not their little. Corners for Christianity, yeah, yeah, specifically their weird little corner of it, right? So no yoga other infidel, you're not doing yoga Wheaton in this point of time. Oh, you mean infidel gymnastics? Yeah. Yeah. That's infidel gymnastics. That's you're not doing that. That's actually good name for yoga studio. Anyway. Infidel. Haster nearly a man majored in religion during his early years, he recalled, I was trying to take Old Testament and New Testament and theology classes and I was competing with all these preachers, kids, and missionaries kids. It was tough. In other words, because it's the school where all of like the missionary kids go to, he just kind of realizes like, oh, I'm kind of in out of my depth here when it comes to religious studies. Haster would later praise the religious grounding Wheaton gave him, claiming it gives you direction, the perspective where you hold yourself. I'm not saying I'm a humble person, I wouldn't blow my own horn on humility, but I certainly think that a lot of things I do are certainly guided by my faith. Interesting. We'll see where the guidance of his faith takes him. As a right wing evangelical institution, Wheaton missed the most exciting parts of the civil rights movement that is occurring the early stages of it while he is in college. Kempers 1999 profile points out that there were no sit-ins at Wheaton, and in Haster's senior yearbook, there was only one picture of a protest. Quote, "It shows clean cut men holding signs reading could A. Blinken graduate from Wheaton and don't ban the beard." They were protesting the school's no-beard role. Oh my God. What the fuck what year is this? You said this is during this like 64 this is 64 64 or 63 or 64 And I should note that in 1963 the year before has to graduated fired men were photographed turning their it hoses on civil rights Protesters in Birmingham during the March from Selma right I'm sure the beard stuff was important to you know, yeah Yeah, yeah 100% but but our beards. I mean, I wonder if they that was their way to sort of acknowledge the civil rights movement by by We can get Abraham Lincoln delivery. I don't think that's what they were doing. I don't think that's what they were doing Yeah, I know they were I mean, I wonder what do you think is I get that school and they like read the news and they're like wow You think LBJ is gonna sign this civil rights act or something. He's got to be way off, huh? Oh, I think I think reading the news is probably one of the things you're not supposed. That's what are the infidel infidel Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you just read the Bible. That's the only thing you need to read up on Bibles the only good news you need Haster played football while he was in college, and he also got into wrestling his shoulder injury is apparently a problem But it also apparently doesn't trouble him enough to stop him from playing contact sports But here's something really weird miles. He's able to continue playing football and he's able to keep wrestling with this injury But then when it comes time to go to Vietnam My shoulder. I can't I just can't oh, I want it so bad. It just too hurt I mean I can tackle a guy and the gridiron, but like I just couldn't go to war, you know You saw me playing rugby earlier in a scrum. Yeah, it was yeah, I don't know that was I was healed Yes, I bench press 375 pounds, but no, I couldn't I'm not fit enough for now. I'm obvious so push up Yeah, I don't know My shoulder my shoulder was he did he come was that enough of an excuse or did he have? Yeah, like no gets him out of No class insulate him enough. Oh, okay, so clearly he was able to just rely on the injury Yeah, yeah, I mean there's I yeah that that is my understanding. That's what's written Kimper's article Kimper also notes that his college roommate a guy named Parmaly did get sent to Vietnam and became the first Wheaton graduate to die in Vietnam in 1965 He was killed by friendly fire from an American mortar in that Chicago Tribune piece Kemper ads has to it still visits Parmaly's parents in Michigan and once invoked his friend's memory on the house floor in a debate over the burning of the American flag So again to hurt to go serve his country, but willing to use the name of his dead roommate to tell people not that they shouldn't have a Freedom. Yeah, you damn right. I'm gonna score rhetorical points at the lectern over this guy's death and yeah cool stuff Shit right there. Yeah, I think I have something to say. Yeah, and look I'm perfectly pro people getting out of serving in Vietnam If they don't go on to support every single war this country has ever been in sense. Yeah Since he couldn't go to nom he decided he wanted to teach high schoolers about politics He got a gig helping coach freshman football at his alma mater and he starts taking teaching classes at Northern Illinois University And he's working on his degree But he you only have to do a part portion of your degree before you can start teaching as long as you like finish your degree while you're teaching So while he's finishing this second degree he takes a job at Yorkville high school Just a few miles from his own former high school in his autobiography He claims he shows up to an interview at Yorkville high school in street clothes He was just trying to ask about an opening and to his surprise He's whisked into a brief interview quote. I was a live body and they needed one What's interesting about this? That's not a crazy story in teaching a lot of schools are under staff like as long as you're qualified You can say that happens sometimes, right? This is also the entire story of Hashtag's political career is he just shows up Like we need a live body get in here get in here get in here like now you're the speaker Well, you'll you'll this will become increasingly clear later, but it's funny how how consistently this is how this guy gets everything in his life Yeah, just forced gump in it through everything. Yeah, he is really gumping his way up the ladder So he's hired and he also gets the job coaching the wrestling team I guess they just didn't have a wrestling coach. They only started the program a year earlier Before the semester began he takes a trip to see his aunt in Bethesda and since he was going to be teaching politics He decides to visit DC for the first time while he's there one thing he notes that's adventurous Is that quote back then if you wore a suit you could go anywhere So he just walks into the Senate chamber and sits down to listen to Barry goldwater argue with Mike Mansfield about US missile programs apparently That's how Congress used to work. He just walked in. Oh my god. That easy. Are you a white guy in a suit? Oh step right in come on and clearly you belong in Congress. Yeah Yeah, you were a post-debate about missile policy. Of course, of course, you know You're technically fifth in line to the presidency right now just for showing up. Yeah, right. Oh man the 60s Speaking of the 1960s. You know what? Probably will sell you acid the sponsors of this podcast. That was a good Who's not fifth in line to the presidency? 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I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct story after story of injustice But I've never heard a story quite like this The more I I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. We'll hypnotize them to strengthen that memory, so he went into a good France. I really didn't believe any of it was real, and I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Listen to examined, the backfire effect. In the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts for wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So after Hasterd visits DC for the first time, he also, before he starts staging at Yarmville, he goes on a YMCA-backed trip to Japan. Weirdly enough, one of the people who's on this trip with him is Tony Podesta, the former lobbyist and brother of former White House Chief Staff John Podesta. That doesn't go anywhere, it's just weird. Yeah. Okay. He and Tony argue about politics, but I was just like, well, it's kind of, I didn't expect a Podesta to show up in here. On a YMCA trip? On a YMCA trip to Japan. What is YMCA offered trips? I don't think that's how they work anymore, Sophie. Right. Yeah. The YMCA of old is very different than the ones we have now where I take my kid to learn how to swim. Yeah. Just like where my niece is coming from. Okay. I swim and it's lovely. Yeah. It's a great experience. So Dennis started teaching and coaching at Yarmville in late 1965, while he was still finishing his teaching degree. In 1971, when he was six years in, a woman named Jean Call started teaching PE there. The two started dating and eventually fell in love and got married. She spoke to the Tribune for that 1999 profile and here's a quote from that. The most striking thing about him, she recalled, was how he tuned out the rest of the world during wrestling season. If it was during wrestling season, he's a different person, she said, he's very focused. In between sports, he was a good guy to be around. Wow. Now this was written almost 20 years before we knew that Dennis Hastert had been molesting kids as a wrestling coach, but wow. That's terrifying. He's a different person. He's a good guy to be around in between sports. This one, not the sports is happening. Yeah. What's he like during the sports? Wow. Okay. Oops. 99. So, yeah. Now, we're going to talk now about what he does as a high school wrestling coach, but again, I need you to know that this doesn't come out until like the 20 teens, right? So this is all happening in the 70, I mean, the late 60s up through 1980, but none of this is going to come out until really not all that long ago, right? So people don't know this at the time, what I'm telling you, other than his victims. So Yorkville had only started its wrestling program the year before Hastert arrived. Ed Ewelt, an Illinois state wrestling historian, notes that his first move was to have his kids compete against the schools with the best programs. His philosophy was you only learn by wrestling the best. That is probably a good philosophy because it really works, right? Like, he's, he's. Yeah. And it fumbles you too. Sure. Yeah. And it gets, gets you like working with kids who are you're going to learn things from, right? Um, this works very well. And in terms of his ability to coach a wrestling team to victory, Hastert is very good at his job. Most articles from before the allegations dropped will lod him for having taken on every other job around for the team. He drove the bus. He did a lot of the cleaning. He would take the kids on special trips to learn from other coaches. He was an incredibly involved coach and was like doing the work of multiple adults to run the wrestling team. And suddenly, this meant that Hastert was often the only adult with these boys. An interview with his former boss at Yorkville High School from a different and much later Chicago Tribune article notes, reached at his home, garnet told the Chicago Tribune. He remembered Hastert's commitment to his athletes, whom the coach often took on road trips to wrestling camps or to compete with larger suburban school districts and nonconference wrestling beats. So he's like, I never knew. I thought he was a great coach. So whenever he said anything bad about him, he was always taking the kids out of state and or out of the area on his own. We don't know precisely, yeah, sorry, what do you say? No, no, just like it's, it's so funny how often like you, there's always like these like child molesters and like sports programs things because it just like it's sort of, it's so much easier, I think, for people to let their guard down because they think like, well, they're there to do sports and nothing else and yeah, it's not even like thinking much of like they went on that trip where they I think they were learning football stuff for wrestling. Yeah. Gymnastics or whatever. A lot of trips like he was a really dedicated coach, he's always taking the boys away. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Take them off our hands. We don't know precisely when Hastert started molesting his wrestlers. We do know that ultimately five people would come forward to the authorities, obviously as adults. And in one case, it was the relative of a person who had been molested by Hastert, but since died. And we know that at least one of those five people claimed to know other victims who chose not to come forward. Right. So there are more than five victims by every credible account, right? Right. But we don't know how many I don't, my guess would be he probably didn't start molesting kids year one. I just assume it's the kind of thing he would have like worked up to, but I don't know like exactly when he started the first evidence of him molesting a student is in 1971. I should also note that he marries Jean in 1972. I don't know if like that was cover or what, like how what he would have thought of in terms of that relationship. He and his wife are generally apart after he finishes teaching, right? They seemed like not that there's any evidence. It probably they had a bad relationship, but like she won't follow him to Washington, which is interesting. The earliest victim we know of, sorry, I said 1971, the earliest victim we know of was Steve Rainbow, who was the student equipment manager of the wrestling team in 1970. Steve died before he could come forward, but his sister Jolene talked to the press once allegations from other victims had been publicized. He'd come out to her as gay in 1979, years after graduating, a friend of Steve's also confirmed that Steve had told him that has to molested him in 1974. Per an article in ABC News written by Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz and John Cappell, quote, "I asked him when was your first same sex experience?" He looked at me and said it was with Dennis Haster, Jolene said, "I was stunned." Jolene said she asked her brother why he never told anyone, and he just looked around and he kind of looked at me and said, "Who is ever going to believe me?" She explained that her brother expressed having been traumatized by the abuse. He took his belief in himself and his kind of right to be a normal person. Here was the mentor, the man who was, you know, basically his friend and stepped into that parental role, who was the one who was abusing him. He damaged Steve, I think, more than any of us will ever know. We'll hear more from Jolene later. One of the other victims that we know by name is Scott Cross. In the fall of 1979, Cross was the wrestling team captain. The Chicago Tribune talked to him after he testified when all this goes to court, and I'm going to quote now from an article by Christy Gatowski based on that interview. As a young boy, I wanted to be part of what Coach Hasterd had created, Cross said, "I was a small guy with a lot of ambition and wrestling seemed to be the perfect sport for me. He was a key figure in my life as a coach and a teacher." Late one night, after practice a senior year, Cross stayed afterwards to try to lose some weight for an upcoming match. Hasterd suggested a massage could take some pounds off, but instead Hasterd, quote, "pulled down my shorts, cross-testified, and touched him sexually. Stunned, Cross got dressed and ran out of the locker room immediately. He never told anyone." As a 17-year-old boy, I was devastated, he testified. I tried to figure out why Coach Hasterd had singled me out. I felt very alone and tremendously embarrassed. I felt intense pain, shame, and guilt. Today, I understand that I did nothing to bring this on, but at age 17, I could not understand what happened or why. Now, both of these guys are abused when they're 17, which is not at all okay. I think there's at least one that was abused at 18, but at least I should also note one of Hasterd's victims claims the abuse, which included forced oral sex, began when he was just 14-years-old. We know that there were more than five victims, and the ones we know ranged in age from 14 to 18. We don't know if there were any younger ones. He was at a high school, so maybe not, but we just don't have a comprehensive understanding. One could argue, even if he didn't actually physically touch all of his students, that entire teams that he coached were victimized, even though many of them would not have realized what was happening, and I'm going to quote again from that interview with Scott Cross. And this is the fucking kicker, folks. He also recalled Hasterd's habit of sitting in a recliner in direct view of the shower stalls and watching the teens while they showered. But Cross said, "I had accepted this because I trusted him, and my teammates appeared to as well." "Oh shit, that's a different time, because I have trouble today if someone's saying, yeah, the coach sits in a recliner and watches us through the open shower stalls of anyone not being like, what the fuck?" Yeah. And I think just also speaks to that era of not even understanding what is appropriate and appropriate your ability to consent, or even knowing that's like, "Well, I'm just taking a shower, so you're not thinking of it as like some kind of sexual thing." Exactly. Meanwhile, this guy's got a fucking barco lounger pulled up to just fucking observe the team. A recliner, like fucking hell, longest serving Republican speaker of the house. There isn't like a more intentional seat than a recliner. No, no, no. It's not a hiding chair, it's not a fucking stool. or some fucking milk crate, you brought a fucking recliner? - A recliner. Yeah, the dirtiest of all the dirty old man chairs. So that's what we know about what Dennis Hasterd did to his students. He clearly didn't set off alarms for most of his students because when this all first comes out and it's kind of unclear like what Hasterd has done just that he's being blackmailed as someone who says that he abused them 'cause that's how this initially breaks. There are news articles with a bunch of his former wrestlers. I'm not gonna quote from them, there's a lot of quotes were like, I thought he was a great guy. He was my mentor, I never saw anything. So clearly, many, if not most of his wrestlers, did not notice what was happening. And under his leadership, the team did historically well, which may have something to do with everyone's rosy memories, right, the fact that they were champions. Between 1974 and 1979, they finished in the top three state teams five times. They won the state championship in 1976 and Hasterd was named Coach of the Year, which he would later claim to be one of his proudest accomplishments. He started a wrestling newspaper called The Word and helped organize and then lead the national association of wrestling coaches. In his autobiography, Speaker, Hasterd claimed to have looked back to his old coach as a model for how to behave, which does make me wonder about his own high school experiences. Here's what he said. He'd push, push, push, but he would never invade an athlete's dignity, his boys loved him for that. And it taught me a lesson I've tried to remember ever since. There's never sufficient reason to try to strip away another person's dignity, huh? Odd, yeah. Yeah. A lot of dignity and rolling a fucking barcle lounger up to the open shower stalls. Again, I mean, like, dignified. I think it's, it's clear just even from like his early age, like he's the Machiavellianism, like in him, is so clear that like it's, you could take the things he says at face value or you could be like, "This guy is trying to play three moves in a row with every, every single thing he says and does, too." And it works. So all of the articles about him when he first become a speaker are like, he's like a quiet, plain-spoken man, a humble country guy with no ambition, right? Like no skate, we'll talk about that more. By the end of the 1970s, Dennis was starting to chafe at his position, teaching, coaching, and molesting. There are two different claims about how and why he decided to get into politics. The folksy homespun PR friendly version was given in that 1999 Tribune article. Hasterd has a story he likes to tell when asked how he got started in politics. He says he was on a lobbying trip to Washington with a wrestling group when he realized that the congressmen were just like anybody else and that maybe he too could do the job. So that's, he just like goes for some wrestling thing and he's like, well, they're all people just like me. I could be in Congress. - In what way? - That's it. - Yeah, in what way are they like? I mean, I can tell you one way in terms of some of the people he's going to work alongside. In my research, I found a different, more believable story as to why he decided to go into politics. After he left office, this is after he finishes being speaker and he leaves Congress, he gives an interview to the Hill, and this is while he's working as a lobbyist, making a million dollars a year. And he tells them, I needed money. I asked for a raise. The school said we can't pay you anymore. You're already at the top of the scale. They offered to make him a high school vice principal, but Hasterd said he didn't want that kind of headache. I read in the paper that our state representative was resigning and I decided I can do that. So by that account, he just wanted more money. He just wanted money. That's why you got into politics is fucking money and he's gonna make a lot of money. - Yeah, what about that job? Well, that kind of, that's a different position. Well, I want, was he leaving? Yeah. - Yeah. - All right, I'll do that then. - Yeah, I'll take that job. I'll take that job. - Oh, okay. - And he is going to get that job the same way he got his last job pretty much. Dennis gets 600 people to sign a petition saying he'd make a good state representative. And eventually he gets a call from a county G.O.P. operative named Phyllis Oldenburg who acted as his first political mentor. Oldenburg recalled later, he knew nothing about politics. He will be the first to own up to that today. It has been the most beautiful time to watch him grow. I said an awe of the whole situation. That quote came out before the scandal. Dennis ran in the G.O.P. primary for the Illinois State House so he runs in the primary and he loses, right? This is in 1980. This is his first campaign and he loses. But maybe this would have dissuaded him from continuing in politics, but then it turns into a win because the guy who would won the nomination, who would like won the primary incumbent representative Al Shobarlin falls ill with a fatal disease. I forget exactly what it is, but he gets like deadly ill and he drops out suddenly. And party leaders pick hastard because of the other people who'd been in the primary, he'd done pretty well and he seemed reliable and most importantly, relatively unambitious. They thought he was someone. If we tell him to do this, tell him to do that, he'll do what we say, right? Dallas Ingramonson, the Kindle County G.O.P. operative who helped pick hastard said this to Bob Kimper. There are some people who want to get into this political business who I have no question why they're there. I never had to question Denny. It was clear he wasn't just out for himself. Sure. The same pattern is going to repeat itself in weird ways throughout his career. Haster gets where he's going by being reliable, not making waves, seeing like a safe dude, you can park somewhere without worrying about his ambition causing issues, right? Like he's not gonna fuck things up for you, he'll do what you tell him. In short order, Dennis establishes himself as an arch-conservative. The moral majority inducted him into their state honor role. Per that Tribune profile, one of Haster's first efforts in the state house was to help block passage of the equal rights amendment, a constitutional amendment ensuring the rights of women. Haster, who opposed the ERA, was appointed by then's house speaker, George Ryan, to a committee that prevented the ERA from ever reaching the house floor. I strongly believe in human equality and human rights. And we'll continue to support those concepts and legislation, Haster wrote to a constituent, adding that he thought women's rights were already adequately protected by the Constitution. Interesting. Years later, while serving in the real Congress, Haster would protest reforming Title IX, which requires equal access for women in college varsity sports. His justification was that the law undercut men's sports because some schools were cutting out programs entirely to avoid starting them for women. And he's like, well, we just, we just need to not have Title IX then, right? If it's going to endanger men's sports. Yeah. It sounds like an excuse to exclude females then. Right. Yeah. His votes in the state house were not all perfectly conservative. He voted against giving tax credits to parents to take their kids to private schools. And he voted against using public school buses to transport private school students, which I think are pretty good votes. He won't stay consistent on this when he goes up to big people Congress. But there's some evidence that he had minor principles that outweighed party politics for a little while. Like he's going to be super anti-union as like a big boy congressman. But he, he was like the head of his local teacher union for a while. And so he doesn't immediately roll on unions. It's up until he gets to like the federal level pretty much that he starts fucking on unions, I think. Well, I think it's like, at that point, the incentives aren't as big to completely betray your fellow working man. Yeah. Yeah. That's that level maybe, yeah. You have the political capital to sort of like vote your principles. But then, yeah, when you get to the show, the money's the money is too much. The money's the money, yeah. During his time in the state house, lawmakers were petitioned to call the constitutional convention and pass an amendment demanding a balanced federal budget. He told advocates for the convention that he didn't think it was a good idea to require a balanced federal budget. Interesting. From the start of his political career, Hasterd started finding jobs for his friends and family. That Chicago Tribune piece from 1999 has one particularly fun example of this. One day, in 1985, Hasterd got a letter from another government office promising to hire a man he had recommended at the bottom of the letter and black ink, Hasterd wrote a note to one of his staff. Carol, check this out. Did I write a letter for this guy? Next to his inquiry in red ink, Carol responded, yes, this is my cousin. Thanks. [LAUGHING] Cool, cool stuff. I love politics. I should note that Hasterd also used his time in the state house to oppose Bill's banning discrimination against gay people. He also supported a mandatory seatbelt law, but then voted to repeal it after a backlash saying that he just saw too many people driving without seatbelts and realized the law didn't make sense. Oh, because too many people were ignoring it? Because people aren't wearing their seatbelts. He's like, well, this is a bad law. People ate seatbelts. It's out of my hands. I wish that logic was applied more, it's like, well, no one's obeying this one law that's completely restrictive. I guess we better drop it. Look, people love heroin. Yeah, all right. We've got to sell the grocery store. We can just stop. Might think I think we got this whole thing wrong. Look, Americans love nuclear weapons. They should be available at the store over the counter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like flu medicine. Also, flu medicine should be over the counter. I want to play a flute made out of plutonium. That's right. That's right. Speaking of plutonium, do you know where you can buy some plutonium? Maybe from our sponsors, I don't know, we don't vet them. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, and in my new podcast, what happened to her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival. The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead. Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies. She did all of these grave things, and. came out and spoke about it and he got a year. - I never know who that devil is because he's wearing disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. - Listen to what happened to her on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. - If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. - I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Derio Amade. Alex Carl, Feifei Lee, Palmer Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear and where they think this is all headed. - Silicon Valley is always saying the cliché thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. - Well, yeah, it's up to us. - But when you say us, who's us? - They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. 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The Miss America pageant. - I never received scholarship, I need to pay for my student loans. - He looks at me and goes, you don't look like you suffered in the eating disorder. - It's great, but looks too ethnic. - It's a story, the Miss America organization, really doesn't want us to tell. - An exploitation of our Miss America's is treated by the Miss America organization as an attack on Miss America itself. ♪ Miss America ♪ - Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. - I'm Hamza, and I'm Martin, and we're the host of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know there's a lot of them going around, but why should you listen to ours? - Well, we're only the best podcast in the entire world, and we talk about pretty much everything under the sun. For example, music we're listening to, underground music, trending music, drama in music worlds. Yes, sometimes we even talk about just everyday mundane situations in our lives, like the cool Uber driver we just had, or the food we just say that is surprisingly delicious. Or we'll talk about the Med Gala and the looks that they wore. - Are they awesome? Are they trendy? Come find out. - Because our opinion matters. And so does yours. And this is a place where all of our minds can come together and connect. - So what are you waiting for? Come connect with us. Listen to Out of Character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. - My name is Josie Duffy Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. In over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. - The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, "Man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over." - We'll hypnotize them to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good France. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, "Well, they're gonna figure out if this is not me, they're gonna do their police job." - Listen to examined the backfire effect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - And we're back. So my favorite story about Hashtag's time as a state representative comes from that Chicago Tribune piece from 1999. He once had the State Department of Transportation placed parking restrictions around an adult bookstore in his district to make it harder for patrons to park. Though he quipped to a constituent that parking offenders may not even notice the signs. Since it seems that patrons of the bookstore only want to read a certain kind of material. - Cool stuff, anyway. - Certain kind. - Yeah, when he'd campaigned for the state, I just also loved being anti-poor and after being a serial child molester. Yeah, that really scans. Yeah, very Republican. 'Cause of course, everything's about their appearances and that's not about actual harm to people. That doesn't matter. - No, no, no. If anything, like at the most consistent thing you can pray for is like, "Oh, I understand this person's self-hatred being projected outwardly." I think it's just their principle in terms of the legislation. - Yeah, that makes sense. - Yeah. - When he campaigned for the state house, Dennis had promised to stay in the job as state representative for at least 10, ideally more like 15 years. He claimed it like, well, there'd been six representatives over the last 12 years and my voters want stability, right? So that's my job. If they elect me, I'll give them stability. But as soon as he's in office, he helps pass term limit legislation just in time to jump ship for a better opportunity after six years in office. (laughing) So again, I'm pro term limits, but it's just very like scummy and self-serving. Pretty consistently. On January 27th, 1986, incumbent Republican representative for the Illinois 14th district, John Grotberg, who was in the process of running for reelection, fell into a coma while being treated for cancer. Grotberg had been basically guaranteed to win against his democratic opponent, the county coroner, Mary Lou Kerns, but his coma lasted for months and the party waited with baited breath to see if he'd recover and drop out or try to like run somehow, right? Like this coma lasted, I forget how long, but it lasted a while and people were like, well, what do we do in his family and his assistants? Like, no, he's gonna be fine. He's gonna be fine. Okay, John's gonna beat this. - Okay, Elaine, John. - Yeah, for sure. - Yeah, well, this is all going down. Kerns wins her primary and starts campaigning against a basically dead Grotberg. Now, while Grotberg's people are like, he's gonna snap out of it. England's son, who was again, the guy who like helped get Hasterd into the state role that he has, gathers a small group of people together to work out a plan to deal with reality. Hasterd is one member of this small group and it's decided by Ingramonson that Hasterd will take over for Grotberg. Grotberg resigned on May 22nd, but Hasterd still had several GOP opponents, the most serious of which was a lawyer named Tom Johnson. So Ingramonson and a bunch of people back and Hasterd probably has most backing, but once Grotberg's out, a lot of other Republicans are like, well, I think I could be, you know, in Congress. A Dirty Tricks campaign gets cooked up by Hasterd and his backers to fight Tom Johnson. They had Jill Zwick, a Republican state representative, write a letter depicting Johnson as a religious zealot and throw to the moral majority who held bizarre beliefs. She called him a radical right wing fundamentalist Christian. I should have different the parties are then. He's like, this is how he attacks a guy who is right. Yeah, he wear the radical Christian. Beware the radical Christian, you don't want them. And Hasterd's like, that's not me. I mean, the moral majority gave me a perfect rating, but I'm a compassionate conservative. I'm not like a right wing fundamentalist. I'm a compassionate conservative. And he won. The next step was to run against Kerns, his Democrat competitor, per the Chicago Tribune. In an attempt to rally his fractured party, Hasterd laid claim to the mantle of Ronald Reagan, declaring at a Washington DC press conference that his campaign was really the last time voters will get to vote for the Reagan agenda. Back home, his campaign sent precinct captain's questions on which Reagan's name was misspelled. (laughing) - Real chat GPT vibes from 1986. - R-A-Y-G-U-N. - Yeah. (laughing) - Yeah, I didn't wanna know how these felt bad. - In September of 1986, Kerns was campaigning at Northern Illinois University when she encountered a student in the crowd, a young man who accused her of destroying his family. It turned out that in 1978, she'd gotten engaged to a man who against, like she did not know, had not yet divorced his first wife, who was this boy's father. And that guy may have just come up to her genuinely because he was pissed, but Hasterd's campaign ceases on this moment. And they send an anonymous mailer to 10,000 voters, repeating the claims this kid had made about Kerns that she's a home wrecker, right? And this seems to work. Dennis wins by fewer than 7,000 votes. So it's like not a blowout election, right? - Yeah. - Look, this may have shifted it, right? (laughing) Yeah, but he wins. And he is now going to be in Congress in 1987. He will be the state representative from Illinois's 14th district in the United States Congress. So, we'll talk about that. And what kind of things old Denny gets up to once he's in Congress, because if you thought, I mean, everything we've talked about today was really bad. But it's, I mean, he just, what he's done in this episode is the most morally directly bad, like the most individual cruelty that he's like expressed to a person. But he's going to hurt more people in Congress, right? As a result of his-- is being a congressman. Yeah, we'll talk about that and so much more in part two. Miles, you got anything to plug up in the P zone before we roll out of here? - Just everything I said in the beginning. Check out Ain't It Fuddy. - I got Ain't It Fuddy. - Where we're talking about my favorite sport, my favorite sport, soccer, and you know the rest. - Go Arsenal. - Hey, days like I stand for 20 day fiancee. - I love soccer's. - Yeah. - There you go. Sock 'em up. - Yeah. - Sock 'em up. All right. Let's put a knowledge fight country. The newest podcast on CCM. - Yeah, let's put a knowledge fight country. We've got a new show. Yeah, there you go. Bye now. - Bye. - Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/@behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. In 1986, a man named Scott McLean was killed in broad daylight. And I was like, "Well, they're gonna figure out "this is not me. "They're gonna do their police job." - Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to examined, the Backfire Effect, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.