Longest Serving Republican Speaker of the House Is Being Supported and Defended by Dozens of Conservatives
UPDATE: 12:54 PM EDT –
The judge has just added 15 months jail time to Dennis Hastert’s sentence.
Dennis Hastert has just been sentenced in a hush money case involving his past sexual molestation of teenaged boys while he was a wrestling coach decades ago. A federal judge, calling the former Republican Speaker of the House a “serial child molester,” sentenced him to two years of supervised release and 15 months jail time – not for his actions of sexual abuse, but for evading bank reporting requirements and making false statements to federal authorities.
In sentencing Hastert, Judge Thomas M. Durkin of the Northern District of Illinois also said the former Speaker should participate in a sex offender treatment program, CNN reports.
“I’m deeply ashamed to be standing before you here today,” Hastert said in court during his sentencing. “I know I’m here because I mistreated some of my athletes as a coach.”Â
The court received dozens of letters of support from former colleagues of Hastert, including one from Tom Delay, the former Senate Majority Leader who is now an anti-gay Christian activist.
“He is a good man that loves the Lord,” DeLay wrote to the judge. “He gets his integrity and values from Him. He doesn’t deserve what he is going through. I ask that you consider the man that is before you and give him leniency where you can.”
Right Wing Watch reports that “days after the Supreme Court delivered its landmark marriage equality decision, DeLay claimed that he knew of ‘a secret memo coming out of the Justice Department’ that would legalize ’12 new perversions,’ including ‘having sexual with little boys.'”Â
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