They’re not new either. Hastert was accused of paying hush-money (from campaign coffers) a couple years back, pleaded guilty last October, and it made a pretty big splash.
The salacious details are increasing the scope a bit, but not the underlying scandal – it was always alleged that the money was spent to keep a crime quiet, and almost certainly it was about buggering young boys… we just never had any federal prosecutor saying so “on the record”.
Hastert was first elected to Congress in 1981. That’s seven years prior to Gary Hart’s “Monkey Business” with Donna Rice, which was when the personal lives of US politicians came into the spotlight. So, Hastert may have fooled himself into thinking that nobody would ever look into it.
Congressman Asked To Explain Why His Campaign Spent $1.3K On Video Games
Some explaining to do…
The FEC published a letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) on Monday after one of its analysts noticed that the campaign had made dozens of unusual purchases from the online gaming site Steam.
Wow. Wouldn’t it be nice if this was a world in which an errant $1300 charge on a credit card to a game company really was a scandal? But in an age in which the Koch brothers and the NRA can just flat-out purchase most of congress this really seems like it could only make news in the Huffington Post or a local journal.
I feel like this is deja vu and we already discussed it. Wasn’t it his kid or something and he is going to pay it back?
This is literally the least offensive thing any politician has ever done.
Hey! Can’t you people see the number? $1.3k There’s a letter after the number. That means like a zillion dollars! It’s the end of the world!
I spent 1.3D on pizza last night.
Did it cum with extra sausage.
Eh-heh-heh-heh
Unless it was star citizen???
Grrrr.
There’s a nice overview of the scandal involving Alabama Governor Dr. Robert J. Bentley in the WaPo Today.
In the mortuary of disaster that is Alabama politics, it is important to note that Gov. Dr. Robert J. Bentley is still in charge, for now.
The 74-year-old balding grandfather and star of sexy phone chats to the senior political adviser three decades his junior is accused of being at the center of a complex web of deceit, betrayal and mendacity that falls somewhere between the better parts of the Old Testament and the steamy Southern plays of Tennessee Williams.
The rest of the article’s prose isn’t quite so florid. This is the same story from a few posts up where the 74-year-old Governor has been having an affair with a political adviser three decades his junior. He of course ran on a family-values platform and emphasized his role in the church (which he’s been kicked out of) and his long marriage to his wife (who divorced him a year or two back).
There’s nothing particularly new in the WaPo story aside from a few interesting tidbits about the governor – like the fact that he legally changed his name so that he could put “Dr.” on the ballot, and his use of a state helicopter to retrieve his left-behind wallet – but it’s a good read.
The other fun-fact is one that I’ve seen pointed out by late-night comics: If the governor is impeached, that process would normally be led by the Speaker of the Alabama State House… who is going on trial this week for corruption. And of course the Governor’s case would be put in from of the Alabama state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore… the guy who did the whole “10 Commandments” thing and who recently told state clerks not to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
changed his name so that he could put “Dr.” on the ballot
Is he an actual Doctor, and just wanted it to be part of his name? Or is it a Derek Smart style PhD?
If its the former, then do people call him “Doctor Dr. Robert J. Bentley”? Because they totally should, to point out how absurd he is.
He’s a dermatologist and legitimately a medical doctor. Here’s the sordid tale:
Before the governor’s race began, Bentley was well known in the Tuscaloosa area as both a state legislator and a dermatologist.
“Everybody in Tuscaloosa knows him as Dr. Bentley,” said Angi Smith, Bentley’s campaign manager. “That’s who he is.”
Bentley’s campaign planned to build the “Dr.” title into his marketing, Smith said, with signs that read “Dr. Robert Bentley” and an ad campaign stating “Alabama needs a doctor.”
Smith said GOP leaders were initially fine with Bentley appearing on the primary ballot with his medical title listed as part of his name. She said the party leadership later changed their minds and told Bentley he could use only his legal name.
“Someone suggested that he could solve that pretty simply by going down to the probate office and changing his name to Dr. Robert Bentley,” Smith said. “It cost 17 or 18 dollars.”
So, on March 30, Robert Julian Bentley became Dr. Robert Bentley.
But party leaders refused to yield, Smith said, telling Bentley he couldn’t use “Dr.” as his name on the ballot.
On April 5, Bentley spent another $17 or $18 at the probate office, and again became Robert Julian Bentley.
“I suppose at that point he was Dr. Doctor,” said Taylor Bright, spokesman for the Sparks [Bentley’s then-opponent] campaign. “I almost want to break out into song.”
No mention of this yet?
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert gets 15 months in prison for violating banking reporting laws. He was trying to pay $3.5 million in hush-money to someone he molested years ago. He sexually abused students when he was a high school wrestling coach.
I believe he is also being sued for breach of contract, for not paying the entire 3.5 mil to the person he abused.
Ah yes, here it is. Dennis Hastert, Former House Speaker, Sued By Man He Allegedly Abused : The Two-Way : NPR
I think what blows my mind most about the whole Hastert business was that he began his political career after all the sexual abuse, apparently assuming that it would never come out. And by god, I guess it almost didn’t, it’s so long past that the statue of limitations has run out on ever bringing charges. But what kind of hubris does that take, to run for office knowing you’ve got those skeletons just hanging out there, not just ruin your career but possibly put you away for a long time? Sometimes I idly think about if I were to run for office or become famous for whatever reason, maybe an ex girlfriend would pop up and tell everyone what a bad kisser I was. And that would be embarrassing but this, man, that’s just incredible.
I guess.
For me, the shocking thing about the Hastert thing is how very un-shocking it is. Somewhere in the last ten or fifteen years, the concept of a stalwart, evangelical, family-values, anti-gay Republican ending up being a hypocrite has become something of a stereotype or a trope. The Larry Craigs and David Vitters and Mark Foleys and Mark Sandfords of the country (not to mention several of the examples upthread) just make me expect to see these guys exposed sooner or later.
Oh, and as an aside, I’m not the only nerd on this board who occasionally reads “Hastert” as “Hastur”, right?
I’ve shared this story here before, I think, but I’ll share again: My wife’s best friend’s husband is a very talented and hard-working handyman/contractor; he specializes in pools and spas. At one point, he was hired by a DC “bathhouse” to be their on-call repairman – a relatively sought-after appointment because this place paid top-dollar.
But taking the job came with a catch: he had to sign a super-restrictive and pain-of-death punitive NDA to work at the place. He was not allowed to name any names or tell any stories where the persons that he might see in the place could be identified. He signed, and (at least to me) he has abided by that contract.
The long-and-short of it is that the place is a high-end gay playground that is frequented by many of DC’s most powerful men, mostly because it IS so very discrete. The guy never named any names, but he did say that on several occasions he would round a corner and see somebody that he recognized from the news making out with some young man or another.
That’s all fine, and what people do behind closed doors is their own business. But my favorite story from him came from a few years back when he called up the bathhouse to let them know that he was going to be gone for a week. The owner immediately called him back and begged him to put off the vacation, going so far as to offer him a bonus if he waited a week. “I really need you here - next week is CPAC, and that’s always our busiest time of year.”
There are two really rather large differences between what Hastert has done and those other politicians did. First, Hastert’s crimes probably ruined some people’s lives. It was abuse. Regardless of your feelings about hypocrisy, and certainly Craig, Vitters, Foley and Sandford can be accused of that, though probably the only people really harmed by their actions are their families and that only indirectly. Hastert took advantage of young people entrusted to his care and, as he has admitted, sexually abused them. I’d call that a fair step beyond hypocrisy.
Second, and definitely the lesser, the examples you provided are all people who engaged in cheating on their spouses or hiring prostitutes or whatever the hell Larry Craig was up to after they were already in office. Possibly they felt untouchable due to their elected status, I don’t know. But Hastert ran for office only after he had already committed those horrible acts. He said to himself, that’ll probably never come up, I’ve covered my tracks. Which is just mind-blowingly hubristic to me. Any whiff of that gets out, he’s out of office and in jail. I can’t imagine the mindset that decides this is probably an acceptable risk.
Once again, the whole Alabama mess, summarized here by the NYT. The Speaker (Hubbard) is going on trial next week, the governor (Bentley) is under criminal investigation, and the Chief Justice (Moore) may be removed due to Federal ethics charges.
I bring this up because I’ve been concentrating on the governor, but the speaker case has some wonderful irony in it.
Basically, the guy (all the Republicans, actually) came into office with the mandate to cleanse the statehouse of all the corruption that the Democrat majority had been perpetrating for decades.
So the new speaker (Michael Hubbard) made that his top priority. He passed a set of ethics laws that were hailed as being the strongest in the country.
Of course, Hubbard himself has been indicted on corruption charges and in fact is being prosecuted under that very same statute. So what do you do in such a situation?
Well obviously you challenge the law as being unconstitutional.
And of course having the top people in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Alabama government all being in legal hot water at the same time produces a spectacular set of possibilities:
Mr. Bentley could be called on to replace Judge Moore, who could preside over the impeachment of Mr. Bentley, which could be recommended by the House under Mr. Hubbard, who if found guilty, could eventually have an appeal before Judge Moore’s court.