Hastert Testifies Before a Committee of His Own Design
Dennis Hastert testified for roughly two hours and 40 minutes today before a closed session of the House Ethics Committee. The objectivity of the committee's investigation into the Foley affair has been in doubt, especially in light of the fact that last year Hastert removed its then-chairman, Joel Hefley, for admonishing Tom DeLay.Dennis Hastert testified for roughly two hours and 40 minutes today before a closed session of the House Ethics Committee. The objectivity of the committee’s investigation into the Foley affair has been in doubt, especially in light of the fact that last year Hastert removed its then-chairman, Joel Hefley, for admonishing Tom DeLay.
New York Times:
Wait, before you go…Two weeks before Election Day, Mr. Hastert had planned to be hop-scotching from district-to-district across America, working to preserve a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and his own seat of power. Instead, he endured the political version of a perp walk as he made his way from the spacious speaker’s suite to a dim corridor in the basement of the Capitol, where the ethics committee was meeting behind closed doors.
With his position as speaker on the line, even if Republicans hold their majority, Mr. Hastert sought to clear the air by voluntarily appearing before the bipartisan panel that is working to determine whether Republican leaders and their staff members ignored warnings that Mr. Foley was making advances toward male high school students who work as messengers on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Hastert has maintained that he was personally unaware of such concerns until well after a former page from Louisiana disclosed e-mail messages sent by Mr. Foley, but fellow Republican leaders say they discussed the matter with him earlier this year.
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Washington has been rocked by the scandal of J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House.
Republicans on Capitol Hill keep telling everyone how terribly shocked they are by the tawdry tale of Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House indicted last week on charges of money-laundering in an effort to cover up alleged sexual abuse of a male high school student many years ago.
Members of the American political elite feel they are protecting the establishment by giving the former House speaker the benefit of the doubt, just as the Vatican has done for accused priests for decades.
Federal prosecutors have indicted Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, for allegedly violating banking laws when he paid an unnamed person to conceal unspecified "past misconduct.”
Having just finished its investigation of the Mark Foley coverup, the House Ethics Committee said lawmakers behaved inappropriately, but that no rules were broken: "In all, a pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Representative Foley's conduct with respect to House pages."
The man who held the post of speaker longer than any Republican in history is now but one of a multitude, serving out his last days in the Congress he helped to lose. Denny Hastert's refusal to retire makes him a historical oddity, since House speakers typically end their reigns by either resigning or dying.
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