CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, awaiting sentencing in a hush-money case, has suffered a stroke and was admitted to a hospital the first week of November, his attorney said Thursday in a statement.<\/p>\n
Hastert also has been treated for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication of infection, and had two back surgeries while in the hospital, attorney Tom Green\u2019s statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very hopeful that Mr. Hastert will be released from the hospital in the early part of the new year,\u201d Green said. \u201cThe family very much desires that during Mr. Hastert\u2019s continued hospitalization his privacy will be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hastert was accused in May of evading banking regulations as part of a plan to pay hush money to conceal \u201cprior misconduct.\u201d The Associated Press and other media outlets, citing anonymous sources, have reported that Hastert wanted to hide claims that he sexually molested someone decades earlier.<\/p>\n
The 73-year-old pleaded guilty Oct. 28 to a felony count of evading bank reporting laws in a hush-money scheme. In the written plea agreement, the Illinois Republican directly acknowledged for the first time that he sought to pay someone $3.5 million to hide misconduct by Hastert against that person dating back several decades \u2014 about the time the longtime GOP leader was a high school wrestling coach.<\/p>\n
Hastert had allegedly paid more than $1.7 million to the person, sometimes in lump sums of $100,000 cash, by the time the scheme was discovered. The indictment said the payments stopped after FBI agents first questioned Hastert in December 2014.<\/p>\n
His sentencing date is Feb. 29. Prosecutors recommended that he serve no more than six months in prison.<\/p>\n
Hastert\u2019s lawyers are almost certain to ask for a delay in sentencing, though they could wait until weeks or even days before the February date to do so, said Gal Pissetzky, a Chicago attorney with no link to Hastert\u2019s case. Prosecutors aren\u2019t likely to press for proof on the severity of Hastert\u2019s illness or object to a delay, he added.<\/p>\n
Judges frequently put ailing or even terminally ill defendants behind bars, said a former assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago, Jeffrey Cramer, noting that several federal prisons are medically equipped to deal with such cases. Hastert\u2019s illness is likely to bolster defense arguments that he receive probation or home confinement, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t automatically mean you\u2019ll stay out of prison,\u201d Cramer said.<\/p>\n
A letter dated Dec. 11 and addressed to the presiding federal judge asks for leniency and briefly mentions a hospital stay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn light of his recent hospital stay, I would hope that probation in lieu of confinement would be considered in determining his sentence,\u201d C. William Pollard, who describes himself as a longtime friend of Hastert, wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n
Posted on the court docket Wednesday, it adds Hastert\u2019s current legal plight \u201cmay reflect mistakes in how he structured withdrawals\u201d but that as speaker, Hastert \u201cwas known as a man of integrity.\u201d Attempts to reach Pollard were not successful.<\/p>\n
Hastert did not mention a stroke when talking to a friend on the telephone last week, Dodie Ingemunson told The Associated Press on Thursday. She said her husband, Dallas Ingemunson, spoke with Hastert and was told that he was suffering from sepsis and had undergone a \u201ccouple of back surgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew he was hospitalized for a while …\u201d Dodie Ingemunson said. \u201cBut we had not heard anything about a stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dallas Ingemunson, who is a former state\u2019s attorney from Kendall County, where Hastert is from, told the AP in November that Hastert had been admitted to an Aurora hospital but did not know the extent of his medical issues beyond a \u201cfoot problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 to 2007, was a little-known Illinois lawmaker whose reputation for congeniality helped him ascend the ranks of Congress to become the longest-serving Republican speaker in U.S. history. In January 1999, House Republicans voted for him to succeed Newt Gingrich, who had lost support because of ethics violations and the party\u2019s poor showing in the 1998 midterm election.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Don Babwin in Chicago, John O\u2019Connor in Springfield, Illinois, and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, awaiting sentencing in a hush-money case, has suffered a stroke and was admitted to a hospital the first week of November, his attorney said Thursday in a statement. Hastert also has been treated for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening complication of infection, and had two back surgeries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3230"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}