WASHINGTON — Dennis Hastert’s former House colleagues say the emergence of sexual abuse allegations against him has been jarring and at odds with a reason they anointed him speaker in the late 1990s — his squeaky-clean reputation.
Former Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., a top GOP vote-counter when Hastert rose from obscurity during a chaotic December 1998, said Friday that Republicans turned to him partly because “there wasn’t any inkling of anything” hidden in his past.
“We’ve got to do something quick,” Kingston recalled top Republicans saying as they frantically sought a new leader after an election setback and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton after his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. “We can’t have division. We have to have somebody who can stand the scrutiny and move on.”
Another Hastert contemporary, former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., agreed there were no hints of problems for the Illinois Republican. He said that during the frenzy of Clinton’s impeachment and the GOP scramble to replace Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., they did no research to make sure Hastert wasn’t hiding anything.
In a situation like that, “there’s no time for internal vetting,” said Davis, who was part of the GOP leadership. “In the way he conducted his office, he never got close to the line ethically on anything.”
Seventeen years later, a federal indictment says Hastert agreed in 2010 to pay $3.5 million to an individual from Yorkville, Ill., for silence about “prior misconduct.” The indictment notes that the former speaker taught high school and coached wrestling there from 1965 to 1981 — well before he began his two-decade House career in 1987.
In the indictment, Hastert is accused of one count of evading bank regulations by withdrawing hundreds of thousands of dollars in smaller amounts and one count of lying to the FBI about the reason for the withdrawals.
Jolene Burdge of Billings, Mont., on Thursday told The Associated Press that the FBI interviewed her last month about her assertion that Hastert sexually abused her brother while he was at Yorkville High School, from which he graduated in 1971.
Burdge said her brother told her before he died in 1995 that his first homosexual contact was with Hastert and that their relationship lasted through high school.
In an interview aired Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Burdge said Hastert was a father figure to her brother, Stephen Rein boldt.
But she added, “He damaged Steve, I think, more than any of us will ever know.”
A person familiar with the indictment, announced May 28, has told The AP that the payments it mentioned were to conceal claims that Hastert sexually molested someone decades ago.
The person spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
Hastert became speaker in 1999.
He served eight years in the post, stepping down after his party lost House control in 2006 elections driven largely by voter antipathy to the U.S. war in Iraq.
