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The Longest Serving Republican Speaker of the House is a Convicted Sex Offender
How Dennis Hastert kept his life of child exploitation a secret for his twenty years in American politics
At one point, the third most powerful politician in the United States was a serial child molester. Before Matt Gaetz, there was Dennis Hastert. While it took two years to launch a federal investigation into Gaetz’s alleged sex trafficking of underage girls, it took nearly 30 years before anyone caught onto Hastert’s transgressions.
Unlike Matt Gaetz, who has branded himself as a political provocateur, Dennis Hastert was well received by his colleagues, and accordingly, he occupied the third highest position within his party. Considering there were efforts to impeach then-President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for the legality and deception of the Iraq War, the idea of Hastert succeeding them was more realistic than any other time since House Minority Leader Gerald Ford became president.
Years before Hastert entered politics, he was a wrestling coach and high school teacher in Yorkville, Indiana. This wasn’t the only capacity where he was sculpting and influencing hundreds of teenage boys — he also served as a volunteer and mentor for the Boy Scouts of America for 17 years.
