Ex-U.S. House Speaker Hastert released from Minnesota prison

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Former U.S. House of Representative Speaker, Dennis Hastert, has been released from prison in Minnesota after serving a 13-month sentence for a financial crime tied to sex abuse, federal records showed on Tuesday.

The 75-year-old was sentenced to 15 months at the Federal Medical Centre in Rochester, Minnesota in April 2016 for banking violations that revealed he sexually abused teenage boys.

According to Federal Bureau of Prisons records on Tuesday, this happened while he was coaching wrestling at a high school in Yorkville, Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s.

He is scheduled to be held at a residential re-entry facility office in Chicago until Aug. 16.

 

 

The records did not make clear when Hastert had been transferred and officials did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House speaker in history, pleaded guilty in 2015 to the crime of structuring, which is a form of money laundering that involves withdrawing a large sum of money in small increments to avoid detection.

The lawmaker was taking the money out of his bank accounts to pay a promised 3.5 million dollars in compensation for pain and suffering to one of his five sexual abuse victims of wrestlers he coached.

He admitted in his plea agreement and at his sentencing hearing.

 

 

He was never charged with sex abuse, because the statute of limitations on his alleged crimes had expired.

At the time of sentencing, U.S. District Judge, Thomas Durkin, said he would have given him a longer sentence if it had not been for his age and poor health. (Reuters/NAN)
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