Died of natural causes at 84, coroner says

News of Dennis Hastert's death came on Monday, when Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell said the longest-serving Republican speaker in US House history died of natural causes at his home over the weekend at age 84. Hastert served as speaker from 1999 until 2007. He is survived by his wife, Jean, and two adult sons.

A congenial Illinois lawmaker's unlikely climb

In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known Illinois lawmaker whose reputation for congeniality had helped him climb the congressional leadership ranks. The public knew nothing of his past when Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections and Newt Gingrich lost support over ethics violations and the party's showing.

His memoir, Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics, recounts him confronting Gingrich about the dissatisfaction in the Republican ranks and saying it was unlikely Gingrich could hold his post. Told that, Gingrich asked what to do; Hastert's recorded reply was "Do what you have to do" - and the next day Gingrich stepped down as speaker and left the House. Of the Republican rebels, the memoir quotes Gingrich:

The path cleared when Bob Livingston, the Louisiana congressman considered a lock to succeed Gingrich, resigned after acknowledging several extramarital affairs. Hastert's first weeks presiding over the House coincided with the Senate's conduct of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial.

Bush's agenda, steered into law

Before allegations that he molested high school athletes as a wrestling coach clouded his legacy, Hastert had helped turn much of George W Bush's presidential agenda into law. After Republicans reclaimed the White House, he steered many Bush proposals to passage. They included:

• •Large tax cuts
• •A measure that amounted to a huge expansion of prescription drug benefits

Hush money, Yorkville and 15 months

Hastert's legacy came into doubt in 2015, when he was accused of evading banking regulations as part of a plan to pay hush money to conceal unspecified "prior misconduct". Nearly a year later, prosecutors' court papers described what media reports had suggested for months: the misconduct involved the sexual abuse of teenage boys on his wrestling team in Yorkville, west of Chicago.

The accounts stood against a different public record: across a 16-year coaching career, Hastert led his team to a state championship and took national coach of the year honors in 1976, and he lived his entire life in Chicago's suburbs, primarily in the Yorkville area.

Prosecutors said Hastert sexually abused at least four team members between 1965 and 1981. The man he was paying, identified in court papers only as Individual A, said he was 14, in a motel room on the way home from wrestling camp, when the abuse happened. Other accounts in the case:

• •Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after offering massages
• •Two wrestlers said he performed sex acts on them
• •Prosecutors described a locker-room recliner where Hastert often sat with a direct view of the showers

Hastert agreed to plead guilty to evading banking laws, paying more than $1.7m of the $3.5m he had promised to Individual A, sometimes in $100,000 cash payments.

At the sentencing hearing where he received 15 months behind bars, the visibly angry judge called Hastert a "serial child molester". A former wrestler, struggling with his emotions, told the court of the "dark secret" he had carried since adolescence. In his own statement, Hastert said he was "deeply ashamed" and admitted he "mistreated" some of his athletes, but he never referred directly to sexual abuse.

Sentenced in 2016 to more than a year in prison, the former history teacher became one of the highest-ranking US politicians ever ordered to prison.