The Party of Pedos did not just start with Trump. The Illinois Republican, the longest-serving GOP speaker in U.S. history, was sentenced to 15 months in prison after leaving Congress for scheming to cover up child molestation accusations.
Nearly a decade after leaving Congress, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert faced allegations that he molested four teenagers, ages 14 to 17, in the 1970s, when he was a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois. In 2015, Hastert pleaded guilty to structuring cash withdrawals to hide hush-money payments to one of his sexual-abuse accusers. The following year he was sentenced to ONLY 15 months in prison and was released from a prison hospital in 2017, several weeks ahead of schedule. Now, he’s dead.
Hastert died over the weekend of natural causes, according to Kendall County Coroner’s Office in Illinois. He was 84 years old.
According to Kenall County:
On October 3, 2026, at approximately 10:00 p.m., the Kendall County Coroner’s Office was notified of the death of John Dennis Hastert, an 84-year-old resident of Plano, Illinois, who was pronounced deceased at his residence while under hospice care.
Following a review of the circumstances and consultation with hospice personnel, the Kendall County Coroner’s Office determined that the death did not meet the criteria for Coroner jurisdiction. Accordingly, the Coroner’s Office did not assume jurisdiction over this case and has released the matter to the appropriate attending hospice physician.
The attending hospice physician is responsible for completing the death certification, including determining and certifying the cause of death.
The Kendall County Coroner’s Office has no additional information regarding this death and will not be issuing further updates.
Hastert, of Illinois, served in the House from 1987 to 2007 and became speaker in 1999. He relinquished the speaker’s gavel in 2007 after Democrats took control of the chamber, then announced his resignation from Congress before the end of his 11th term.
During Hastert’s time in Congress, he strongly supported the Iraq War and was a champion of then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts and a Medicare prescription drug bill. The measure, passed in 2003, was sponsored by Hastert. It established an optional prescription drug benefit program that took effect in 2006.