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

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It's a free-for-all that's free for all. 24-7. Come as you are. No reservations required. Everyone's welcome. Ride. Sip. Sing. Listen. Laugh. Dance. Wander and be wowed. And we are always on. Call Zone Media. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And today we're talking about a guy who was both one of the worst people in all of history and the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House. Speaker of the House. Speakers? I didn't. Need to pluralize that. Anyway, it's Denny Hastert! Denny. Airhorn, airhorn, airhorn. Well, I feel like he's a friend now. You know, Miles, Miles Gray. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A beautiful guest. Like, we know him now. We're close. I mean, I was saying Denny from the beginning. You were. You did immediately start calling him Denny. Very informal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think I just heard his name too much ambiently in the news. You're an informal. It's the lobbyist, Denny. You just immediately start going up to Denny! Fucking Denny Hastert, dude. Hey, Denny! Just saw that old son of a bitch on K Street. You want $200,000 to do something fucked up, Denny? Yeah. Yeah. Ah, Miles. Miles Gray of the Daily Zeitgeist. Yes. And now multiple other podcasts. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do a few other things. I'm talking about 90 Day Fiance or soccer or geopolitics or, you know, fucking Kelly Clarkson. Who knows? Kelly Clarkson. One of the most important topics in geopolitics these days. We do it all. We do it all on all these shows. She was trending. This last week over, like. Yeah, I don't approve of what she did in Indonesia. You know, the death toll is just completely unforgivable. Unheard of. But, you know, that's being a star. And using experimental weapons like that is, I think, unheard of. Just unacceptable. Anyway, let's move away from that dark topic and to the happier topic of Dennis Hastert, who, when we last left off our show, he had continually. It's not even like he's failing upwards. It's just like there's a job and he's standing in the room when the previous. This guy dies? Yeah. Right? Like, that's his thing. Somehow. He just knows. That guy just got sick. Yeah. He just knows to be, like, in the vicinity of the thing he wants. You know what I mean? There's a lesson for you all, kids. If you want to do something and it's, like, a real long-shot career, just put yourself as physically close to the people who make those decisions as possible, and that's your best shot at getting in. There's a very high chance someone goes, hey, you, yeah, yeah, you want to do this? Me? Yeah. Great. All right. You're speaker of the house. Because Newt Gingrich doesn't want to do it. Gingrich can't anymore. It's a little more complicated than that, though. We'll talk about that. Yeah, yeah. From 1987 to almost the end of the George W. Bush administration, Dennis Hastert represented Illinois' 14th district in the House of Representatives. At the time he took office, his primary asset was a 104-acre farm in southern Illinois owned by his wife. It was valued at something less than $100,000. By all accounts, he does not seem to have been a man of wealth when he took office. By the time he leaves 20 years later, he will be a rich man. I've heard estimates of his net worth at around $10 million. We don't know, but it was significant and well out of line with what he might have been expected to earn simply by diligent saving and investing of his salary. That doesn't mean that his congressional salary was inadequate. He went from making, like, $20,000 a year teaching to earning $180,000. His first years in office were spent, in the words of one journalist, offstage. He was a minor player who was expected to fall in line and do what the more experienced Republicans in the House told him to do, right? That's kind of how politics works at this level. There's some evidence that he started living beyond his means as soon as he moved to D.C. and started making more money. In September of 1992, before the election that would turn William Jefferson Clinton from yet another Arkansas pervert to the President of the United States, Hastert and his wife, Hastert found himself embroiled in his first scandal. The House banking scandal was a huge deal at the time, even though everyone's forgotten it now, right? But it was like a big deal in the early 90s. The gist of what happened is that there was a period of time in which the House had a bank, right? And the House would allow members, people who served in the House, to overdraw their checking accounts without suffering penalties from the House bank, as long as the amount they overdrew it from was less than their upcoming salary, right? Mm-hmm. The House bank was called the House bank, but it wasn't a bank in, like, the legal, like, the sense that you and I know, like, we all have a bank. The House bank is instead a clearinghouse, and a clearinghouse is a financial edifice created to allow for the facilitation of various transactions and transfers. I don't understand much of the difference. Other than that, there's a lot less regulation around the kind of bank the House bank is than a regular bank, which is why this happens. The whole story of the House banking scandal is more complicated than I can do justice to, in an aside. I do enjoy, they call it Rubbergate, because a bunch of bounce checks, right? Which I think is kind of cute. That's fun. That's good. That's a good time. That's quaint. That's good. That's enjoyable. Yeah. I miss, I long for a scandal like that. I know, I know. Just a humble gate. Yeah, Rubbergate's cute. Yeah. Basically, this is a huge check-kiting scandal that involves, to some degree, it involves roughly 450 representatives, current and past. Now, most of these guys did not commit crimes, probably. They certainly don't get convicted of them, but what happens is that these guys realize they can overdraw their accounts as often as they want if the overdraft doesn't exceed their next paycheck, and so they do fucking constantly. Hastert is one of the implicated representatives. During the time, it was like a two-year period they're monitoring, he's found to have overdrawn his account 44 times. Yeah. What? In one year? It's like a couple of years. No, it's like two or three, I think. I don't know the exact number. It's like every other fucking week. It's like every week, basically, that he could pretty much. I don't got it. Yeah, whatever. It's just overdraw. Yeah, fine. Yeah, overdraw it. Fuck it. Like most of the 450 reps who got drawn into this thing, he was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, but several people were convicted of criminal behavior, including, I just bring this guy up because I love his name, former representative Buzz Lukens, a Republican from Ohio. Oh, Buzz Lukens? Or Lukens, it's L-U-K-E-N-S. Yeah, Buzz Lukens. I love that name. He was a Republican from Ohio who got drafted. He got on bribery and conspiracy charges. Now, this isn't relevant because it shows Hastert doing anything unethical. He seems to be doing the same thing every other representative does, but it does kind of suggest that he was running up against the limits of his new income almost immediately. Like, he's making 10 times as much, and he is paycheck to paycheck pretty much immediately. Oh, man. I just Googled Buzz Lukens, and you'll never guess what kind of stuff he's into. Oh, yeah? What's Buzz Lukens into? I should have looked him up. Nope. Also, he's also a pedophile. Side bastard. Oh. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Buzz. Oh, Buzz. Convicted in May of 1989. So, he'd been convicted before he gets in trouble for the check thing, too. That's good stuff. Yeah, somehow. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Buzz. That's, that's, that's, I mean. The Republicans tried to get him to resign, and he refused. Yeah. Well, this will not be the last Republican who gets in trouble for something. And I'm not even counting Dennis in this story. So, Dennis's greatest skill in national politics was finding more prominent and powerful men and convincing them to take him under his wing. He was first protege to the House Minority Leader, Robert Michael. Michael, who died in 2017, looked just like Dick Cheney. It's like crazy. It's M-I-C-H-E-L. Like, if you look up Robert, like, Michael or Mitchell, he looks so much like Cheney. It's weird. Oh, God. The year he and Astrid met, he wound up in a scandal for admitting that he didn't know enjoyed minstrel shows in blackface as a child child and missed them he also considered removing racial slurs from popular old songs to be on par with the soviet union airbrushing actual human beings out of history so great guy to have as your mentor denny oh shit what what a cool dude it's crazy this look of like evil conservative bastard it's just like it's just like a spirit that just goes it's just like a genetic code or something yeah we all kind of look like dick cheney yeah yeah it's like carceralization but for like republican members of congress yeah they're all returning to cheney right um so michael despite everything i just said all the racism uh mitchell was known or michael was known as a respectable even beloved bipartisan one of the better republicans of his day to work with if you were a democrat right that's what people say about this guy when the 1990s kicked off and clinton upset republican plans for a second bush senior term newt gingrich and a bunch of a group of new far-right firebrands in congress pilloried mitchell for failing to fight for republican goals hard enough and for playing golf and cards with democrats the reality is that mitchell's voting record was almost identical to gingrich's but that doesn't matter right the facts are not important here it's that like he wasn't like a dick to them and honestly like mitchell would be like well but like by golfing and like hanging out with them i'm able to get stuff done including like push conservative like that's how it works and gingrich is like no you can only be an asshole right we're changing things sounds like old newt old nudie newt in the 1994 midterms mitchell opted not to run for re-election he wound up leaving just before his party took back the house for the first time in his political career we'll discuss that shortly but by the time this happened hastard had already cozied up to his next round of mentors these would include newt gingrich and most importantly tom delay a old tom delay we don't talk about him much anymore either it's been too long it's been too long a lot of guys we don't talk about because of the scandals from this era of republican politics uh tom delay was a texan born in laredo which if you haven't been as easily in the bottom 20 percent of the towns in texas tom grew up in venezuela because his dad was an oil man he went to college in baylor even though although he was expelled after two years from his pre-med program for drinking and defacing texas a&m university which should not be a crime i'm going to stand up for this one thing tom delay did that should be yeah as a result of his hawkish policies and hard-nosed attitude tom acquired the nickname the hammer like hastard the hammer failed to volunteer for vietnam the washington post reported that he received draft deferments and ultimately avoided service during the 1969 lottery there's nothing wrong with this for someone who didn't constantly demand the u.s military kill people overseas because it sounded cool and who called democrats he's going in the bushes to call democrats like kill people overseas because it sounded cool and who called democrats he's going cowards for being chickens and not wanting to go to war right there's a good article in salon on this whole trend of like these republican war hawks who absolutely did everything they could to avoid fighting in vietnam and it discusses something delay would have done right about around the time he and hastard first met right quote at the republican convention in 1988 he delay explained to reporters that there had been no space in the army for patriotic folks like himself and dan quayle during the vietnam war because too many minority youths had joined the service to earn money and escaped the ghetto i would have fought in vietnam but these these darn poor black kids kept volunteering ahead of me that is nuts first off tom they would have found a place for you yeah yeah wild and even try and like seed that sort of like white supremacy as a reason for why you didn't go kill brown people too like holy shit i had not heard that and wow that is that's vile unreal man it sounds like some shit like if we heard it now you'd like laugh at or yeah but now like but back then people were like oh i see okay oh yeah that's why he didn't do that wow yeah yeah makes sense tom because you know they're all trying to get their you know dodge chargers and stuff now with their payment oh yeah it is yeah i would have gone i would have gone i would have gone i would have gone i would have gone i would have gone i would have gone during the 1994 election during the 1994 election season tom delay and dennis hastard partnered up with denny as the junior partner to support another rep ed madigan to be the republican whip instead of gingrich the whip is his job it's like to whip votes right like it's a you're working for the speaker to like get your votes in line to make shit happen right yeah however as i noted that election went way better than expected and gingrich became not the whip but the speaker of the house right so they're delay and hastard are working together to get the votes in line to make shit to get this other guy elected the whip gingrich wins but then he can't take the job because the election goes crazy good and gingrich becomes the speaker of the house and to talk about this because this is a really important moment in american history that i think people who were like born in the late 90s or kind of later don't always know so i'm going to quote from an article in history.com led by representative newt gingrich of georgia who subsequently replaced democrat tom foley of washington as speaker of the house the empowered gop united under the contract with america a 10-point legislative plan to reduce federal taxes and dismantle social welfare programs established during six decades of mostly democratic rule in congress gingrich's house of representatives home to the majority of the republican freshmen led the republican revolution by passing every bill incorporated in the contract with america with the exception of a term limits constitutional amendment within the first hundred days of the 104th congress so that called this the republican revolution for a reason the republicans take the house for the first time in a while and then pass an insane amount of bills just absolutely gutting the welfare state um and that's not the only thing it does right but that's the contract with america this unprecedented blast of republican legislation was forced through with the help of delay and hastert because gingrich was speaker he needed a new whip um and delay ran for the job against gingrich gingrich had another guy his favorite appointee that he wanted to be his whip but tom delay wins and hastert runs tom delay's campaign and so they wind up the delay winds up the whip and he makes his friend dinny the deputy whip and together the two built what the washington post called in a contemporary article quote a vote counting operation that is the envy of other republicans who once had hopes of climbing the ladder roll in other words they're very good at whipping votes in line to pass this contract with america so they do it play a major role and why the republicans are so legislatively successful pushing this contract right hastert has a front row seat to that interviews with republican representatives about this period of time always emphasized that they would call dennis coach they he gets called coach by his co-workers in congress they don't oh boy um they only know or maybe most people yeah and a lot of these interviews at the time they'll suggest that the skills he developed as a wrestling coach were what made him such a good whip right he's really good at finding what motivates different representatives and finding ways to like promise them he's also good at like strong-arming people into voting without making them feel like he strong-armed them right and again that's that's they call him coach yeah it's gross uh many of these quotes and lines from articles are unintentionally cringy today knowing what we know now here's an example from that washington post article on capitol hill hastert lumbers down the marble hallways like a woolly bear draping his beefy arm over the shoulder of a colleague as he tries to secure another vote for the piece of legislation of the day he was always in the shadows but he was always doing things recalled former ways and means committee chairman dan rostenkowski he was always in the shadows but he was always doing things the dennis hastert story oh boy to put it lightly oh boy dan you accidentally hit the nail on the fucking head there oh he's always in the shadows he's one of those creepy shadow guys putting his arm around people just grabbing he loved to grab people from the shadows great shadow grabber yeah yeah yeah really good at grabbing people by surprise from the darkness it's an important skill in a deputy whip all right yeah if we were doing superlatives for house members he got best jump scare from the shadows grabbing and you and scaring the shit out of you yeah he hastert come on up get your award yeah get you get on up here danny yeah speaking of people who deserve awards miles you know who deserves all the awards we can give them so our sponsors oh oh no sophie i support our sponsors you got it first you know i think they could i think they've got a chance they got that dog in them that's an interesting thing to say to you your business partner and we're back sophie look my business partner isn't just you it's the products and services that support this podcast don't forget christ yeah and christ of course of course my business first of all i gotta give it up to my business partner jesus christ you know yeah but who are you gonna call who are you gonna call an emergency i mean i set myself up for that yeah but yeah that's true yeah 10 times out of 10 sophie oh if it's a ghost or ghostbusters yeah definitely definitely definitely not uh actually you know what if if dennis hastert's ghost starts haunting me after this i will call not not the ghostbusters but probably like the ghost like whoever catches ghost pedophiles i don't know i don't know whose job that is the ghosts from uh from from the return of the king from lord of the rings sure yeah they seem like they don't like pedophiles yeah i bet they'd help i mean i think they were i think they were pedophiles they were pedophiles they were ghosts i don't know that that's established by tolkien yeah yeah um because Because Hastert had played a role in helping Gingrich pass the many bills included in the contract with America, it's worth looking at what that contract included and its consequences. A write-up by Phil Harvey in Prospect from 1995 notes that the contract only called for cuts in two specific areas, aid to families with dependent children and the crime prevention parts of the 94 anti-crime bill. Per Prospect, quote, At the same time, the contract promises a variety of new social benefits in the form of tax breaks. These include tax incentives for adoption and for the purchase of long-term care insurance, an elderly-dependent tax credit, a $500 per child general tax credit, and an increase in the amount of earned income retirees may receive without any reduction in their Social Security payments, and a cut in taxes on Social Security payments for the elderly with incomes over $34,000 for singles and $44,000 for couples. Now, that should make it clear who this contract is really with, right? Middle class and particularly like elderly and soon-to-be elderly middle class Republican voters, right? Right. Right. You are cutting aid to the poorest people in this country, and you are giving aid in the form of tax breaks and credits and whatnot to, like, your voters, right? That's the contract with America, right? The contract is I'll give you money and you vote for me. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's more direct now with the president just promising people five grand, but it's always kind of been how it works. As Harvey noted in his article, cutting welfare and using that money to create new middle class entitlements isn't really about fiscal responsibility. Quote, Deficit reduction may provide a cut. It may cover for the cuts, but the immediate effect is a regressive redistribution of income. Now, Harvey absolutely called what was happening at the time. He referred to the contract with America as Gingrich's time bomb and termed the new era it inaugurated in U.S. politics as the great rollback. Quote, The Republican attack on the safety net comes primarily from their welfare reform bill, dubbed the Personal Responsibility Act of 1995. The bill would effectively return the United States to 19th century policies toward the poor and public assistance, complete with orphanage. social safety nets they they know what the knock-on effect is which is like more instability more chaos crime and then you're also the people invested in the military industrial complex or prison industrial complex not cutting money yeah we're making money on both sides like we're we're already cutting programs that's going to create more money for us to siphon up and on top of that when they're these people are left destitute with no recourse and are committing crime or whatever lock them up we also profit off of that part too so it's a yeah it just it works out uh either way it works out for them great yeah no matter what they play both sides so they always come out on top yeah right so as hastert moved up in republican politics and helped influence the course of the nation he spent his newfound money on a bunch of classic cars he insisted to the tribune that he didn't see these as an investment but as a way to recapture moments from his past presumably moments like abusing his students in the shower room during the years where he still drove himself his cars could be recognized as an investment in the future by their many vanity plates including kong 14 ushr 14 and cd whip 2 just a lot of vanity plates that are just your job title wait what was the first one kong 14 like the congress 14th district in illinois you couldn't include illinois in there right but it's an illinois plate i assume in my mind i'm like king the 14th king kong movie no no no no no and then ushr u.s house of representatives 14 and then cd whip 2 that he's the deputy whip congress so that tribune profile notes that the hasterts quickly abandoned any plans to become a washington couple jean would remain in illinois where she continued to teach pe in the same school that her husband had hunted boys in as denny's career built momentum jean told a journalist that she started to wonder if she shouldn't move to dc quote this is probably a lot more important than i thought it was but if it is don't tell me it's the way she always phrases stuff is really interested to me like i wonder if she knew in order to keep the gravy going she needed to not know much about her husband's day-to-day activities i have a feeling i don't know if you're married to them you're probably interacting with them enough that you're gleaning something yeah you probably have an idea yeah he doesn't also seem to be too slick about it anyway yeah that's the other thing is like i don't think he's super good at hiding what he's doing um so yeah my my assumption is that dennis and his wife to stay home because he had some extracurricular activities hopefully these ones were consensual that he wanted to engage in in dc without getting caught but that's entirely supposition i don't have evidence of that it's just kind of weird when you read some of the stuff she said about like why she wasn't in dc during the 19th sorry you're gonna say something miles no no i think it's just like the nature of their relationship too it sounds like for someone who is a predator like that you don't want the person who kind of knows you well to be that close in the environment where you're operating like that yeah just like with the sports thing she's like when it's wrestling season i don't know he's out of the house he's different he's a different guy yeah yeah and i'm sure like for him this is some form of that like whether it might not be the same thing but like clearly he's that part of his brain is active when he's dealing in congress and that that's kind of what i suspect yeah during the 1990s dennis voted to among other things require puerto rican citizens learn english if puerto rico became a state he voted to abolish the tax code not all this stuff passes obviously uh he also supported a republican bill to ban the u.s from taking part in a conservation program that right-wing conspiracists including i think alex jones had deemed the black helicopter bill because they thought it would lead to the un taking over american soil this is one of like those early those first like gasps of the conspiratorial right actually getting like recognition from the political right right in a in the modern era yeah so he's he's a piece of that so he had no problem signaling to the fever swamps and he clearly saw those voters as his people but like his former uh mentor uh mitchell he was also known for being a respected bipartisan as doug booth a former hastert aide told the tribune quote when it comes down to the nitty gritty of getting a bill done dennis hastert says i'll take 75 now and i'll come back next year and get the other 25 you have a lot of people who are all or nothing denny is more concerned with getting things done right that's that's that's what being a bipartisan is right is only taking 75 of what you need up front um but he is like i mean unfortunately objectively he is like more reasonable about shit than a lot of modern republicans are as a guy in congress too but he's also this is as we'll talk about he's a big part of why partisanship gets so bad and so is gingrich right gingrich is really when that process accelerates for the republican party of like no the democrats are completely illegitimate fuck them and everything they're trying to do right um once political action committees become a thing denny jumped on board immediately by 1999 his head accrued more than a hundred thousand dollars in donations in just three years it's not a lot by today's money but it was a lot for back then it was described by a reporter as booming with lobbyists trying to gain his favor the gingrich speaker years were a chaotic time for republicans in the house the swift and startling exercise of so much power brewed up a reaction newt gingrich literally installed a life-size replica of a tyrannosaurus rex skull in his office to like intimidate people that was one of like the decor decision decisions he made i think hastert puts in like bird statues or something normal actually um but during gingrich's time in power he keep uh hastert kept his mouth shut and racked up committee positions chairman of house government reform chairman of criminal justice the speaker's steering committee on health he became known as the republican expert on health care not for any good reason but because he was one of the people calling the shots his old bio on the website of his former lobbying firm dixtine shapiro characterized his impact this way on health care he helped author the health care reform bill which was signed into law by president clinton in 1996 to expand coverage to the uninsured and chaired the house working group on health care quality which ultimately authored the patient protection act that legislation which passed the house on january 24th 1998 expanded americans choices and access to affordable high quality health care sorry i had to look this up i'm sorry i'm sorry i had to look this up uh wow it's taking up it takes up way too much fucking space to have a fucking stupid ass bigger than i thought it would be oh yeah the t-rex skull oh yeah yeah sorry it's good stuff or no it's like a full-size replica it's nuts wow he's got that which honestly i would love to see it but i don't know i don't know do too if i were the speaker of the house but because i like dinosaurs not to intimidate people just because dinosaurs are cool yeah for normal reasons or go like go harder if you want to intimidate him like hang that shit above the chair they sit in or something yeah you know what i mean it's like it's not giving game of thrones it's giving weird no no there is a fun hashtag quote where he's like i just don't think a dinosaur skull is the right symbol for the republican party when you're right you're right denny that's probably a bad call broken clock so there's substantial debate about how true everything his bio said it like what he said those claims about his role in all this health care stuff is and how well those programs in laws worked and how much credit hastert deserves for them there's a lot of evidence that shows he saw himself primarily as representing the insurance industry. I found a great article from the website Modern Healthcare from back in 1999. They report on a breakfast Hastert attended while trying to push through HMO reform. Consider the recent spectacle of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert at a $1,000-a-plate breakfast fundraiser led by health insurance lobbyists. This breakfast at Denny's was held on the eve of the House vote on patient protection legislation. He picked up $15,000 for his political war chest and a large amount of egg, most of it on its face. The GOP-backed bill, with its softer legal approach, turned into burnt toast. The defeat was helped, one has to think, by news coverage of Hastert's morning meal. So, again, he's like the Republican who gets to say shit about healthcare. He's primarily talking to insurance companies, and at times it bites him and the Republican agenda in the ass, because he gets caught going to this bribery breakfast right before a bill on HMO reform. Cool guy. Nice dude. What year was that? What year was that? That would have been 99. Yeah. Okay. So, like, yeah, I mean, like, at this point, I mean, the machine's fully rocking with, like, the Gay Street Project and, like, Tom DeLay and them being like, look, if you're lobbying, if we see you give a single dollar to Democrats, we won't even fucking talk to you, which was happening behind the scenes during this period, too. And Hastert's really involved in that. He is Tom DeLay's right-hand man, right? Yeah. I mean, like, when that happened in 94, like, when they took the House, like, Tom DeLay called all these lobbyists, like, into the office to be like, just so you know, dude, we're going to start keeping track of who you're giving money to, and you better remember who's in charge. It's us. Yeah. You better remember who the boss is right now. Yeah. In 1998, Gingrich's Republican revolution proved to be somewhat shorter-lived than he had hoped. The midterms went badly for his party, and he had to step down as Speaker because he had directly promised the midterms would not go badly for his party. His replacement was originally meant to be, uh, a House representative named Robert Livingston. Now, the 500-pound gorilla in the room with late 90s politics, we haven't talked about this yet, is Bill Clinton's sex scandal, which broke in January of 1998. The House voted to impeach Clinton and adopted two articles of impeachment. The Senate would open a trial in 1999, and as we all know now, Clinton was not forced out of office. But the Republican Party nearly universally adopted the line that he ought to, that, like, if he's not forced out, then he needs to be forced out of office. And so, you know, there's a lot of reasons to resign, because what he did was so bad. And Robert Livingston is one of the congressmen who's like, Clinton has to resign. Like, it's, he can't, absolutely can't stay in office. What he's done is unforgivable. In December of 1998, before he could take office as Speaker, the news broke that Robert Livingston had had several adulterous affairs, all while loudly insisting President Clinton needed to resign for his own. Now, to his credit, once he gets caught, Livingston steps down as Speaker and resigns. And he asked Clinton, follow me, you know, Bill, I'm resigning because what I did was so bad. You should do the same. And I love, Bill Clinton's response is like, no, I don't think we should be just destroying people's careers like that. Yeah. No, I'm good, fam. I don't think you should have resigned, actually. Yeah. And then he just stays and just sits. Wouldn't be me. I mean, look, he sucks, but it's funny. It's a funny moment in politics. Well, especially with, like, that such faux moral outrage and trying to act like you have the high ground, but it's just purely just done performatively. Yeah, don't shut the fuck up. Got caught. You were perfectly happy to do this before you got caught. The truth is that many of the elected Republicans who went after Bill Clinton most loudly for his affair were either having active affairs, had had active affairs before, or would later have active affairs. Newt Gingrich, who's one of the loudest guys telling Clinton to resign, also was a constantly cheating on his wives. Per an article in the New Republic, Gingrich's litany of infidelities has been widely reported, as has his habit of leaving wives for mistresses, of the affair that he carried out with a volunteer during his first campaign in 1974. One of his aides said, we'd have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her on the desk. But that hasn't stopped him from claiming positions of moral loftiness. In front of the T-Rex? Oh, my God. No, this would have been in 74. He didn't have a T-Rex then, Sophie. This is pre-Rex. Oh, sorry. But that hasn't stopped him from claiming positions of moral loftiness, decrying the impending downfall of our society, and pinning books arguing there is no attack on American culture. More deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular effort to drive God out of America's public life. Shut the fuck up. Yeah, sure. Shut the fuck up. How does God feel about you constantly dumping your wives for your mistresses? Like, repeatedly fucking her on the desk so often it costs you an election? Well, the other thing, too, is that, like, Callista, his late, I think, current wife, he was also having an affair with her while he was talking about Bill Clinton. He sure was. Yeah. So it's just like, that whole time, he was like, oh, yeah, I'm having sex with this staffer who's, like, 20 years younger than me. What Bill Clinton did was bad, and I think in a just society, you would have to stop being the president after something like that. Yeah, yeah, sure. But not when the people coming after you are, like, the people, like, literally the people whose job it was to prosecute him are the one group of people who do not have any moral claim to condemn him, right? Yeah, not the, yeah, the subterranean goblin people. Dennis Hastert, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No reason. Like, you. You guys don't get to go after him for this. Sure, we can all get lumped in in the pieces of shit category, but there's levels to this. No, I'm sorry. You are all the same kind of guy. So by this point, because, you know, Gingrich has collapsed spectacularly. He can't be the speaker anymore because he's fucking, like, flamed out. And now Livingston has had just this absolute scandal explode in everyone's face. The Republican Party is not doing so hot. They are not doing so hot, right? At the end of 1998. They are kind of in damage control mode. And they need a new pick for speaker. And it's got to be someone safe and controversy free. Tom DeLay was considered at first, but eyes soon began to drift towards Denny Hastert. I think because everyone knew Tom DeLay was way too fucking corrupt. I want to quote again from the Washington Post. Hastert emerged as a consensus choice for speaker because of what and who he is not. There is not a breath of scandal associated with Denny Hastert. Said Brad Goodrich, deputy executive director of the Illinois GOP, referring to the marital infidelity that drove Livingston from the speakership before he even formally accepted it. Just to be sure, Representative Donald Manzullo asked Hastert Saturday the question on many lawmakers' minds. I looked him right in the face and said, can you withstand the scrutiny? Recalled Manzullo, one of the social conservatives who regarded Livingston as severely tarnished. He said, yes. No scandal with old Denny Hastert. No. Scandal free. Are you sure? Yeah, absolutely. Let's go. Yeah, why not? Give me the gavel, man. I'm ready. Yeah. Nothing to hide. No, I never did anything to a high school student. Dude, me, Dennis Hastert, that guy who's always lurking in the shadows. Come on, bro. Shadow guy? Nah, nah, nah. Shadow guy? Definitely not. Definitely not. Coach. I'm your guy. Grabs people from the shadows? I'm your guy, dude. I'm your fucking guy, man. Let's just get it over with. Yeah. So there were worries at the time that Hastert's low-key nature and relatively short tendencies because he's been in the Congress a while at this point, but not long in Congress terms, right? Sure. That this would cause a stature gap, right, that would harm his efficacy. Basically, no one's going to listen to him as speaker or take him seriously because he's too new and he's just not a very powerful guy, right? To an extent, obviously, the partnerships you make, your history in Congress, the time you've been in there all contribute to how powerful you are next to another representative, but a lot of it's just chutzpah. Too, right? Like your attitude, like are you a controlling person who is able to like get other people to follow you? And Hastert was seen as kind of weak, right? That was sort of the worry some people had. And so there's this big concern, and you find this a lot in writing from 99, before Hastert actually takes up the job as speaker, a lot of people are concerned, well, he's basically just going to be a toady doing whatever Tom DeLay says, right? Like Tom DeLay is a way more powerful like congressperson than Hastert is. And so he was sometimes accused of letting DeLay act as de facto speaker. This is a fair critique, although maybe not. Here's the thing. He definitely does a lot of the things DeLay would have done as speaker, and he's really close with DeLay, and he takes his advice. They're also guys with the exact same politics. So I don't know how much is he just like doing, is he literally just letting DeLay run things, or is it more that they're just kind of the same guy, right? Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. They have the same outlook. Right, right. I think that's probably more it, to be honest. It was Hastert's promotion to speaker that inspired that first 1999 Chicago Tribune profile that I've quoted from several times, right? Because that's like the first thing I have found that is a detailed article about like the whole life and career of Dennis Hastert, up to the point at which he accepts the speakership, right? And we'll be done with that article fairly soon because it doesn't cover anything that helped afterwards. But I have to read the opening paragraph of that article now because I have very seldom have I read an article in which the journalist writing it, more clearly wanted to fuck their subject, and it's very uncomfortable. This is the first paragraph of a profile on Dennis Hastert. The eyes have it. Those eyes that are at once interrogating and impish. Those eyes whose brown hue can barely be discerned from across the table, hidden as they are not by the glasses he wears, but by a perpetual squint that is somehow both glaring and grinning, daunting and dancing. Those eyes, Denny Hastert's eyes, have a certitude, a focus set long ago, unchanging even as an ever-changing world passes before them. Bro. What the fuck is that? What the fuck? fuck what the fuck is that lead normal looking old guy and i've never heard wow what is happening with this who wrote that and are they okay they are not i said his name earlier i'm worried about them now because that is a fucked up way to open a profile on a congressman especially one with like the the fucking scandals they've had like the predation in their history and, like, go back and, like, you still stand by this quote here? What do you think, man? I mean, I know Hastert's a pedophile, but I'm a little worried. Like, hey, Denny, did this journalist, like, do anything to you? Are you okay from him? I'm worried about this guy. Wow. Anyway, we don't have unlimited time here, and I don't want to risk going into too much detail, just, like, recounting the Bush years for everybody. You all know the broad strokes of what happens after Dennis is made the Speaker of the House in 2000, right? You have the 2000 election. Bush becomes the president. 9-11 happens next. The United States flips out. We invade two countries. We pass the Patriot Act. We create the Department of Homeland Security. And in general, our political class makes a bunch of expensive, short-sighted moves that permanently damage our society in more ways than I could name in, like, an hour-long podcast. And Hastert has a front-row seat to all of that. He plays an integral role in many pieces of that, and we'll talk about that. After ads. And we're back. Miles, what do you remember in 9-11? What do I remember? Yeah. You and I are, like, similar ages, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a junior in high school when 9-11 happened. Oh, you're a little older than me, yeah. Yeah, and it was. I just remember my AP U.S. history teacher, who, like, really, like, fostered my love of history, just, like, came out, like, when we were, like, wheeled the TV in while we were all watching, too, and just, like, at a certain point, he turned it off. He's like, guys, I just want you to know. Because we're like, what does this mean? Like, I think we were old enough to be like, something's going to happen now because of what we just saw. And he was just like, I'll just tell you this, guys. Nothing's going to be the same after this. I don't know what, but just know, like, this will be a point where you go, and nothing was. It was the same after this. Yeah. And then I remember, like, the jingoism that was existing in the week following it. Oh, man. And I drove up and down, like, Ventura Boulevard, like, in the valley, like, in a car parade, and we were just trying to, like, pick up girls on the side of the street. And the other wild thing, too, and I remember this at the time, there were so many people, like, waving Israeli flags during this, like, 9-11 thing that, at the time, I was like, wait, I don't. Oh, yeah, because it was, like, solidarity with, you know, against the Islamic. Well, at that time. Right. Yeah, when you look back, like, that this was a signal that, like, oh, we are now going, like, this region of the world is now going to feel American violence, basically, and we'll be able to direct that in certain directions. Anyway, so there were so many things. At the time, I was just like, yeah, whatever. In retrospect, I'm like, man. Yeah. Yeah, and like anyone that age, you just become obsessed with it because it's such. You've never seen anything like that, and you know that it's the beginning and the end of something, you know, significant. I mean, yeah, for me, because, again, I was. You know, it came from a very conservative household. I was still. I was in, like, 6th or 7th grade. I was very concerned. Like, I listened to my parents, right? So I believed a lot of the political things they did, but I still remember being upset, like, kind of weirded out by how, like, everyone went crazy. All of the adults I knew were, like, talking like fucking Bond villains about nuking the Middle East and shit. That. You, like, if you were not around for that, you do not know how much discussion of that happened, particularly in red states, of, like, we just got to nuke the whole glass at all. My mom said that. Wow. My dad was like. My dad was in the. You don't think we deserved it camp is what I heard at home. Yeah, it was very different for me. It's like, I was like, what, dad? And he was like. I was like, but the people. He's like, you don't. He's like, do you know what we're doing outside of these borders? Because that's, you know, a lot of. He's like, there's a lot of people that don't like this place, just so you know. And I'm like, uh-huh. We pissed some people off. It's not. I'm not going to justify it, but it's not weird that it happened. Yeah, that Chris Rock bit about OJ. He's like, I'm not saying he didn't do it, but I understand. Yeah, I remember. One of the things I remember most in terms of, like, setting the mood of the time for those of you who were younger is for, like, a month after 9-11 happened, you could not buy clothing with American flags on it because everything that had an American flag printed on it was sold out. Flags were sold. This is my collection from suburban Texas. Like, it was crazy. It's a good year for Old Navy. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, and then 2000, 2002, everything just had a fucking American flag on it, basically. Yeah, and then 2002, you can't leave the House without one. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy stuff. So, as I said, Hastert had a front-row seat and was a big part of why the United States had such an insane and damaging reaction to 9-11. In October of 2001, he pushed the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives, and it passed 357 to 66. Hastert would, from then on, take personal credit for the Patriot Act's passage. He said this as, like, as late as 2011, telling a journalist it wasn't popular and there was a lot of fight in Congress to get it through. And, like, it passed 357 to 66. Like, Denny, it was popular. Now, I'll say this. I don't know if it's fair to say that, like, oh, the Patriot Act would have happened no matter who the Republican speaker was. But Hastert is the Republican speaker who rams the Patriot Act through the House. So it's not unreasonable to blame part of it on him, right? Sure, sure. Definitely could have, like, pumped the brakes on it if he didn't. He didn't think it was good. He didn't. That's what matters. Yeah. Denny also supported the war in Iraq and helped push for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. He also played a role in pushing the No Child Left Behind Act, which was, to say the least, a very mixed bag. It's why we all had so many standardized tests. Mm-hmm. Depending on who you ask, Hastert was either a genius political operator par excellence, using his coaching skills and genial, unambitious manner to line up votes and act as a perfect house henchman for Bush and Cheney. And a big thing that, like, Bush liked about him and that was supposedly, like, this is one of the reasons why Hastert would be a good speaker is, like, he's never gonna run for president. Like, you don't have to worry about this guy trying to, like, build any buzz up around himself. He will be your creature, right? And he is Bush's creature for the next, like, I mean, most of a decade, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. His most influential personal innovation was something that became known as the Hastert Rule. Yeah. He refused to bring any legislation to the floor that was not supported by the majority of the majority, a.k.a. the majority of the speaker's party. Now, this makes sense from a political standpoint. You only remain the speaker if your reps support you, and if you bring forward a bunch of legislation they hate, you might lose your job, right? So this has always been a thing. Speakers have always, this has not been, no one ever called it a rule before, but speakers have always kept this in mind. Not as, like, a rule, but as, like, well, I don't want to put forward too much legislation that's gonna piss off my other reps, right? Finding this as a rule the way Hastert did was not only nonsensical given Hastert's actual performance, it helped to massively increase partisanship in the House. This is one of the things that just makes American politics more partisan and acrimonious, right? There's a lot of things that contribute to us getting to the point where, like, a lot of Republicans are just now talking about wanting to murder their political opponents. But this is one of those things. This is a necessary step on the road, right? And also, again, I have to note, this is called the Hastert Rule. He talks about this, a fair amount. This, he doesn't abide by this. No one really does. Per an article published in MSNBC by Timothy Noah, that's when then-Speaker Hastert, a Republican, pulled from the House floor the bill creating the position of Director of National Intelligence because it lacked support from a majority of the Republicans he was supposedly leading. Far from being praised for this surrender of authority to the majority of the majority, Hastert was criticized for spinelessness. The bill eventually passed with a few tweaks to appease two grumpy committee chairmen. Before Hastert, speakers ignored the majority of the majority, whenever circumstances warranted it. The Atlantic's Molly Ball recently noted that Tip O'Neill had no choice but to violate the yet-unwritten Hastert Rule many times because his caucus contained a lot of conservative Southern Democrats. Right? So, number one, Hastert isn't even popular with his own people for creating the Hastert Rule. I think it's just like cowardice. It's so he can justify doing things as like, well, this is just the rule. This is just how you do things, even though it's never been how things were done. As hated as it has become, the Hastert Rule has always been a loose guideline rather than a rule. In 2012, the New York Times calculated the rule had been violated 36 times in the past 22 years. Dennis Hastert violated the Hastert Rule 12 times himself, which no one knows is more than any speaker in recent memory with the possible exception of Tip O'Neill. Slow clap. No. It's really funny. The Hastert Rule, and he's the guy who breaks it the most. Yeah, yeah, right. And then I felt like afterwards he was also like, there really wasn't a Hastert Rule anyway. He does say there's no Hastert Rule later in like the 20-teens. Yeah, when he's out of office. People are, yeah. Fucking freak. Yeah, I'm going to conclude with another quote from Noah's article. If Denny Hastert must be elevated to the status of prophet, remember him not for the craven rule he invented, but for his willingness to violate it again and again. Hastert never suffered any notable consequences for these transgressions. Bit of a pattern for the man. Yeah, truly. Now, one of my favorite Hastert stories came out in the wake of 9-11. There was a woman, Sybil Edmonds, who worked for the FBI as a translator. Sybil was a naturalized Turkish-American citizen and she spoke Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. She was very patriotic and after 9-11, she's like, I think she'd been planning to do something in maybe academia, I forget. But after 9-11, she's like, I'm going to offer my talents to my country in order to protect it from terrorist attacks, right? That's Sybil's justification for joining the FBI and working as a translator. Early in this period, she and her husband are approached by a couple, the Dickersons, who were part of the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. The Dickersons come on very strong, urging the Edmonds to join these organizations. And they're like, I don't think they'd really care about us. And they're like, no, no, no, you guys are in the FBI. You should do it. And they kind of insinuate, you'll get a bunch of money given to you if you join these organizations, because they want people high up in like the FBI and who are influential in security, right? We're trying to like, you can get bribed, basically. They don't say it outright, but they're insinuating it. And this struck Sybil as very odd. Around the same time, in her day job listening to Turkish wiretap targets for the FBI, she starts hearing Dennis Hastert's name come up, over and over again. I'm going to quote now from an article in Vanity Fair. Sources familiar with this testimony say that in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with the very senior politician indeed, Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and the Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. The Dickersons, says one official familiar with the case, are only the tip of the iceberg. It's a huge deal because up until, I mean, it was just a few years ago that the United States actually did recognize the Armenian genocide. And Hastert does this not because it's a good thing to do, but because there's a Republican in California running in a district that's heavily Armenian, right? And he thought this would help. This is advantageous to acknowledge the genocide purely for a voting result, yeah. But still, it would have been a good thing. Yeah, of course. No, but I mean, they're so cynical that they're only looking at it in terms of like, no, this will help with my race. I mean, yeah, sure, they want this genocide, but it's even worse than that because the Turkish government opposes any recognition of the Armenian genocide. Hastert was instrumental in passing the resolution out of committee with a large majority. But then in October, literally minutes before the House was set to vote on the resolution, Hastert withdrew it. His claim is he got a letter from President Clinton. And Clinton was like, oh, this will harm national security, actually. You can't let it pass, bro. It'll harm national security. National security. We don't know why Hastert withdrew the resolution, but one of the officials at the Turkish consulate, Sibyl Overheard, claimed the price to get Hastert to withdraw the resolution was around half a million dollars, right? So Sibyl here's a Turkish guy at the consulate being like, yeah, he needs a half a million dollars. I'm going to quote again from Vanity Fair before we talk about all this. Between April of 1996 and December of 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the findings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw of Florida, declared a higher total in un-itemized donations than Hastert over the same period. So Turkish guys are talking about he needs half a million dollars. So Turkish guys over that period of time, and he stops the resolution from getting voted on. Interesting. Huh. Yeah. Now, and then when he was out of office, he was also like a Turkish lobbyist. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Miles, I didn't realize you knew that. But yes, yes, that's what something we're also going to build for. Now, obviously, I can't say that he was literally bribed to remove that resolution. Maybe he wasn't, right? The only reason I would say it's not a smoking gun is that Hastert was infamously corrupt and getting bribed by a lot of lobbyists, right? Right. So there's other people the money could have taken it from everyone. Yeah, I should also note something, you know, Rob Livingston, the disgraced congressman who was going to be speaker and then had to quit. You know what job he took immediately? After leaving Congress? Turkish lobby? Yeah, the Turkish government hired him to lead their lobbying efforts against the resolution. He was paid $700,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool stuff. I love politics. One of Denny's main interests as speaker was prosecuting child abusers. In 2000, he supported and helped pass the Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act, in 2003, after Elizabeth Smart was rescued from nine months of captivity. He called for a national notification system for child kidnappings and demanded repeat child molesters like himself be sent to jail for the rest of their lives. There's actually a lot more of Hastert pretending to be a big wants to fight the pedophiles guy, but you get the idea, right? Like, it's Yeah, it's a good, good, good smoke screen, or great smoke shield against future accusations, I'm sure in his mind. Well, I've been always on the side of children. I'm anti-pedophile. Yeah. During Hastert's time as speaker, he gained a reputation for being historically bad at reigning in corruption among House representatives. It became vastly more normal during his tenure for congressmen to not just take money from lobbyists, but to deliberately work out ways to profit from their position. For an article in the New York Times, the military spending bill for the 2000 fiscal year contained 997 earmarks. By 2005, that number had grown to 2,506, in 2000, the largest domestic spending bill which funded labor, health and education programs had 491 pet projects. By 2005, it had 3,014. Steve Ellis, vice president of taxpayers for common sense recalled 2005 as the perfect storm of the profligate era with 15,000 earmarks in appropriations bills, the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, which became a symbol of the need for changes to the system. The conviction of representative Randy Cunningham on corruption charges for his selling of earmarks and the Jack Abramoff lobby. Scandal. Yeah. Ah, yeah. All this good stuff is happening while Denny's the speaker of the house, right? And it's a lot is very famous. And part of his popularity is he brings back a lot of money for his district. And a lot of it's in like, does the federal government really need to be spending money on this? Probably not. Golden water fountains for everyone. Right. Did he help to normalize that kind of fucking graft and corruption, which I would call that a kind of corruption? Absolutely. He's a big part of it, right? Is it also a kind of corruption? Yeah. Is it also a currying independent of him? You know? Yes. That's also very fair. And also just like this is the era of full blown corporate embrace of of Washington, D.C. It's all happening with Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist and all these guys. Oh, Grover, another guy I used to talk to. Yes. It's all just yeah, it's like all this is I think that's really important for people to know too about this era. Like this is really when companies like, well, how do I change bills? And you have people like Tom DeLay. It's like you don't give any money to Democrats. You give me money running things. We'll give you an audience. And yeah, that's how things are going to be done now. That's how it works. Yep. And now we're going to talk a little bit about the Jack Abramoff scandal. Jack is another back in the day when I would do what was particularly reporting in the twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, like election season. I interviewed Jack. I interviewed Grover. I interviewed a lot of these people, sometimes multiple times. Did he wear his cool hat? I don't recall him wearing a hat at the time. Yeah. At the time, he was out of prison. Not all that long ago. Jack Abramoff also, in addition to being a lobbyist, produced the Dolph Lundgren movie Red Scorpion for reasons that are politically frustrating. He had incredible access to the Bush administration and was part of Bush's transition team. Over the next six years, he used the connections he made there to commit fraud on a vast scale with a whole bunch of our elected leaders. And eventually he pled guilty to three felonies. The Abramoff scandal was disastrous for Hastert's best friends in the House. Tom DeLay was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for money laundering and conspiracy, although the case was overturned for, again, frustrating reasons. Another Hastert friend was Robert Ney, who in 2007 was sentenced to almost three years in prison over a conspiracy to commit multiple offenses, all centered around his relationship with Jack Abramoff. Here's a fun summary of just one of his crimes from the Department of Justice. Ney admitted that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips from a foreign businessman who was hoping to sell U.S. made airplanes and airplane parts in a foreign country. Just just give me chips. Just give me those. What do I take? Give me give me those chips. There's good as cash, right? Give me those chips. I'm going to go right to the slots. I'm taking the tables, baby. Put it all on black. Did you hear our agreement? Yeah, yeah. Whatever you want, man. Whatever you want. Give me the fucking chips, man. Give me those fucking chips. I got a problem. Now, Hastert does not get any serious in any serious personal trouble over Abramoff, but he definitely does shit that should have been illegal during this period of time. And he's just a little smarter about it than some of his friends. And he's just a little smarter about it than some of his colleagues. By the mid aughts, he and two business partners had acquired one hundred and thirty eight acres of farmland outside of Plano, Illinois, near the site of a proposed highway, the Prairie Highway. One of his partners in this business venture was Dallas Ingmanson, his former mentor from the state house days. Hastert, the humble farmer, supported this highway, even though opponents pointed out it would destroy farmland and suburbanize the region. One opponent of the highway said it was crammed down the throats of a rural community backed by commercial interests. Hastert was one. such interest, and he successfully used his position to earmark 207 million dollars, for the project in a 2005 transportation bill. Next, per the Washington Post, four months after the bill was signed, Hastert's trust sold the land to a real estate developer who planned to build 1,700 homes on the parcel. Hastert's share of the proceeds was worth more than $3 million. Ingman's son later told the Chicago Tribune, but his role in the deal was not made public until Hastert reported real estate transactions in the area on his annual personal financial disclosure in May 2006, which the Sunlight Foundation used to match against local land records and connect him to the trust. Hastert dismissed the idea that the land was more valuable because of his earmark. Nothing to it, Hastert said at the time. Again, he profits like $3 million from this deal that he earmarks after having bought up the land knowing where the, anyway. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's Taylor's oldest time. You know, like I remember when, like my first sort of foray into politics was working on a clean energy bill that was like getting renewables in like the state of California. Little did I know it was being, it was being penned by a billionaire who had a parcel of land and the way the bill was written that basically the only place to build this solar facility was on this tract of land the guy had based on these very specific things. Oh, fun. Yeah, and most people were like, yeah, we need more renewable energy. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. To build on this very specific site for this person to make a fuck ton of money on. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's the benefit, I guess, of being high up there and after the director of the money goes, yeah. That too, yeah. Being in control of the money. Ah, 2006 was Hastert's terrible year as speaker. That same year saw the explosion of a scandal involving another Hastert friend, Representative Mark Foley from Florida. Do you remember the Mark Foley scandal, Miles? Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. It turns out Foley had for years been sending sexually explicit text messages and sometimes physically sexually harassing teenaged congressional pages. A separate Chicago Tribune article notes that for nearly a decade, Foley had been called a nuisance and a ticking time bomb. By his peers. Because of his incessant attraction to male pages. Quote, a number of witnesses testified they had been told that in one case, Foley, possibly intoxicated, appeared at the page dorm after their curfew and was turned away, it said. So, that's not great. Yeah, no, that's bad. That's 100% bad. Yeah, Hastert had been repeatedly warned about Foley. Again, people are coming to Hastert as the speaker being like, this guy is a problem. He's going to cause, he's going to cause us issues. He's a ticking time bomb. Right, right. And Denny's like, I'll deal with it. No, it's all fine. It's okay. Don't worry about it, right? There's evidence he tried to help cover up some of his friends' indiscretions. Per that Tribune piece, quote, by the end of 2006, the House Ethics Committee put out a 200 plus page report indicating that Hastert, his aides and others had failed to take sufficient steps to put a stop to Foley's longstanding overtures to current and former House pages. Hastert was singled out for not acting on warnings about Foley's emails. Cautions delivered separately to him by two GOP officials. in spring of 2006. That was months before media attention on the sexually charged communications Foley sent to former pages led to Foley's resignation. The warnings came after top Hastert aides were told Foley was behaving inappropriately with pages, the report said. So again, he gets warned about this and for some reason, he decides to back his friend, the guy doing creepy shit with teenagers. I wonder why. Yeah, yeah. Huh, yeah, confusing. It was the combined weight of these scandals and the disastrous decision of the 2006 midterms, which did not go well for the Republican Party, in part due to these scandals, that forced an end to Hastert's historically long term as Speaker of the House. He ultimately would leave Congress after his term expired. In interviews at the time, he expressed a desire to relax, paint fishing lures, and work on his classic cars. Because he was so obviously corrupt, everyone speculated that he would become a lobbyist once the one-year waiting period expired after his term. His oldest son, Joshua, took a job as a lobbyist at a major firm the second before he was elected. Pretty much. That his dad became Speaker. So people were like, are you going to do what your kid did? Right? Like, clearly he did to take advantage of you being the Speaker. As a contemporary article in the Daily Herald noted, quote, and this is them interviewing Hastert, I don't really see myself as a lobbyist and would probably not do that at all, Hastert said. Okay. You want to guess what job he took a year later? Say, man. Yeah, it's lobbyist. Take that flight to Istanbul, baby. Yeah, yeah. That's right, baby. That's right. He takes a job as a lobbyist with Dickstein Shapiro at the time of May 1st, a major Washington-based firm. He was paid a reported $1 million a year to manage a mix of energy firms, real estate developers, and tobacco companies as clients. One of the big things Hastert does is his client is Lorillard Tobacco. They pay Dickstein Shapiro $8 million to run their lobbying to allow candy-flavored electronic cigarettes. Dennis Hastert spearheads the project and he's really successful at it. He's a part of why we have flavored like nicotine vapes these days. Fucking jewels and shit. Why all the teens got addicted to nicotine vapes. Yeah, we have old Denny Hastert to thank for a piece of that. Fucking vaping, Jesus. Yeah. He also represented the Republic of Turkey who paid his firm roughly $240,000 a year. Weird. Great. That's great. That's really great for him. Yeah. I love that. I'm sure he did only good things. For several long years, Hastert just made money. But his victims from decades ago were still out there and still angry. Last episode, we talked about Steve Rainbolt, one of the students molested by Hastert. He had died tragically of AIDS in the 1990s, but his sister Jolene survived him and never stopped hating Hastert, especially since he had the audacity to show up at her brother's funeral. And this is in like 95. Per an article with her by ABC News, I was just there trying to bite my tongue, thinking that blood was coming out because I was just. So after he had gone through the line, I followed him out into the parking lot of the funeral home. I said, I want to know why you did what you did to my brother. And he just stood there and stared at me. He didn't say, what are you talking about? You know, or what? I don't know what you're talking about. He just stood there and stared at me. Then I just continued to say, I want you to know your secret didn't die in there with my brother. And I want you to remember that I'm out here and that I know. And again, he just stood there and did not say a word. Hastert got in his car and drove away. Wow. So, cool stuff. Damn. Jolene, over the next years, will repeatedly try to take action against Hastert. She writes to ABC News and another news organization, but they ignore her. After Mark Foley gets busted in 2006, she writes to some survivor advocacy group that again gets nowhere. And then, in May of 2015, Jolene gets a call from the FBI. They were looking into allegations that Hastert had abused his students while a wrestling coach. Did she know anything about that? Obviously, she talks to them. And a few days later, the story drops. One of Hastert's former victims, now an adult, and this person is still anonymous, had made contact with him at some point, I think in the 20-teens it would have had to happen, or 20-tens. Denny, desperate to avoid publicity over like what he had done to this kid and others, promised to pay him three and a half million dollars in hush money. Now, he could have gotten away with that. It's not illegal to just send whoever you want three and a half million dollars. And they don't have to tell anyone why you're doing it, right? If you have three and a half million dollars, you can't just send it to somebody. But there's a problem. Because of the Patriot Act that Denny had helped to pass, taking out that much money and sending it to someone all at once trips you up. There's a bunch of reporting requirements that are going to bring additional scrutiny on you, right? So to try and avoid this kind of attention, he starts structuring his payments to this person in under $10,000 increments to avoid setting off alarms. However, structuring is an obvious tactic that the feds expect criminals and terrorist organizations to use. And so they notice what he's doing. They're like, well, this is clearly structuring. It's a bunch of like $9,800 payments to some, like what the fuck is happening here, Denny? So they noticed what he was doing and they, they opened an investigation and that is more or less how things come crashing down for Denny Hastert. He lies about some stuff, like some of the things he's done financially are illegal and he, you know, he tries to cover up initially what had happened. It does not take long for everyone to find out what he'd done. I think Hastert is initially claiming, oh, it's fake blackmail. I was just paying them to avoid like the publicity nightmare, right? Right, right, right. And so, and that's, there's a period of at least a few days to a few weeks where that's all people know. And so there's a bunch of articles at the time like interviewing his former students at his wrestling, that had wrestled for him, interviewing his former colleagues, everyone being like, no, Denny would never do anything of this. I never saw anything like that. He's always been a great guy. He's a really cool dude. And like 40 people write letters on his behalf to the judge talking about what a good guy he is. And then after a couple of weeks, the rest of the story comes out. More victims come forward. The prosecutors announce at least five people say that he molested them when they were children. Yeah, so people, a lot of, I think a bunch of those 40 character references are withdrawn at that point. Although there are some funny ones from some of his friends in Congress, including Tom DeLay, that it's like, oh yeah, you really wanted to bat, go to bat for this guy, huh? Yeah, right. I mean, they'll always have those letters. Like that stick that, that's always like a thing where you're always like, you sure you want to write that letter of support? You sure you want to write that? You want to maybe check? Maybe check. You sure about that? Yeah, it might not look good. Maybe let a couple more cards fall before we go do that. But it's also like the kind of thing like a guy like, like Denny Hashard could summon because of the amount of wealth he also created for all these other craven freaks around him that they're also like, yeah, man, you need me to back you up on something? I know the drill. We fucking do whatever we need to to get this shit done. Absolutely, Denny. Yeah. So, one of the debt problems is that, you know, it's become out what he's done. People are willing to talk about it and do testify in court about what he did to them. But the statute of limitations for his crimes has long since passed, right? So he can't actually be charged for any of the sex offenses he committed he is only charged and convicted. for the financial crimes. However, the judge in his case does declare him a serial child molester. He makes, like, honestly, it's a really shitty apology, right? And fucking Jolene comes after him being like, you can't even fucking really admit that you actually did it, right? He calls, he sends a letter to his friend saying, like, I'm a victim too. I'm not even clear what he was arguing about there, but he does not in any way take real accountability for his actions. Sure, sure, sure, yeah. He's sentenced to 15 months in prison. He serves 13, and he's released in 2017, and he just died a few weeks ago. Right. So, that's the Dennis Hastert story. Holy shit. I'm glad that guy's dead. Yeah. Woo! We should talk about him more. People don't talk about Hastert often enough. Yeah. No, I don't think so, and I think at the time, too, like, when the scandal came out, people were just, like, already consumed with so many other scandals, and I think the other part that people have to connect is, like, really, where he, like, the place he holds in the continuum of, like, the degradation of, like, how, you know, partisanship was happening and also just, like, the corporate cronyism that became just, like, by default, the way of doing business. I mean, not that it wasn't that bad, but, like, this was truly, like, this was when it was really. It gets worse. It gets worse. Yeah, exactly, like, the foundation of, like, a lot of the stuff we see now. I think it's a mistake to look at corruption in Congress and be like, well, it's all. And, yeah, there's always been corruption in Congress, but it also got. It got a lot worse and a lot more blatant. And Hastert's a significant part of that, right? Yeah. I mean, it's. There is debate as to how much he drove himself and how much of it was just, like, he would passively let. He was doing the work of other men to enable this corruption, right? But also, he got, well, pretty rich himself. So I'm gonna say Hastert deserves a fair amount of the blame personally, too. Yeah, you're not. No, and you can't. You're not entirely passive to even reach that level of trust with these. Other freaks, you know, at the top. It's. Yeah. Sure, you may have been malleable, and they liked that about you, but that's not all to say that you were just, like, a mindless automaton. You're like, I didn't know what I did. Yeah, you know. You knew damn well. Yeah. Anyway, Miles, I know damn well that you have several podcasts. Damn right. You can check me out every day on the Daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien, formerly of Cracked.com, also talking about the Premier League and the Champions League that soccer, you know, on Ain't It Footy with Jemele Johnson and Chris Martin, and, God, another one. If you like 90 Day Fiance, because that's how I unwind, especially after having to talk about shit like this, then I watch Trash Reality TV with the homie Sophia Alexander on 420 Day Fiance, so check that out, too, if you so please. And you can also find me everywhere at milesofgray, G-R-A-Y. That's right. That's right. Check at it if you please, and check it if you don't please, right? Maybe you're torturing somebody, and you just want to put something on at, like, 150 decibels to blow out their eardrums, you know? Do it. Any podcast is good for that. Why not use one of ours or our friends, you know? Please. Please. Look, we found out that people actively committing torture are 3% of our audience, actually, which is low for podcasts. The Joe Rogan experience is up to 20%, but, look, we care about every listener, you know? Hey, look, let's get those numbers up. Let's get those numbers up. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, Denny Hastert. 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 slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking. No battles there. 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