title:  Now We Know What This Top Republican Really Did To Children, And It Is SICK
text: Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was a sexual predator who attacked at least one child, a fact he covered up while leading the House of Representatives, two heartbeats away from the presidency of the United States.Court documents filed on Friday stated the disgusting details in cold, black and white text.Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million to a person the former House speaker sexually abused when the victim was 14 years old and Hastert worked as a high-school teacher and wrestling coach outside Chicago, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday.The court filing is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse of a 14-year-old.Hastert kept the behavior under wraps even as he worked his way up the political ladder, from the Illinois Legislature through Congress and into the Speaker s office.In October of 2015, Hastert plead guilty to breaking banking laws while trying to secure hush money to keep his abuse quiet. He is currently trying to avoid jail time, with his lawyers having the nerve to claim that his declining health and the public scorn he has received since the abuse came to light is punishment enough.Hastert was part of the Republican-orchestrated impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 that failed to remove him from office for an extramarital affair.Hastert became Speaker of the House in 1999, after Newt Gingrich stepped down due to Republicans losing seats in the 1999 election and the next in line for the office, Bob Livingston, also exposed for having an extramarital affair.It was widely believed that Hastert took his orders from then-Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the two soon worked together to smash existing House rules in order to get Republican advantages during his time at the top.His tenure lasted until 2007, by which time Democrats had taken over the House in large part due to a scandal involving Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL). making advances towards teenage pages which was not acted upon quickly by Hastert, as well as the Iraq War.Under Hastert, the House operated under what was often described as a  culture of corruption  in which access and votes were traded for favors, sometimes outright bribes as in the case of Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA).But few were aware of just how corrupt the man who presided over it all, Dennis Hastert, really was.Featured image via Flickr