CHICAGO (AP) – Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is scheduled to plead guilty Wednesday in a $3.5 million hush-money case after agreeing to a deal with prosecutors about charges that he violated federal banking laws and lied to the FBI.
The change-of-plea hearing will be the longtime GOP leader’s first court appearance since his arraignment in June, when he pleaded not guilty in the same courtroom in Chicago. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years behind bars.
A May 28 indictment accused Hastert of handing as much as $100,000 in cash at a time to someone referred to only as “Individual A” to ensure past misconduct by Hastert against the person never became public.
The Associated Press and other media, citing anonymous sources, have reported that the payments were meant to conceal claims of sexual misconduct decades ago.
A guilty plea would seal the downfall of a man who rose from obscurity in rural Illinois to the nation’s third-highest political office.