Comes with drinking in the morning....
"Hastert rushed to make money as payouts to alleged victim grew; Increased business portfolio, sought bountiful annuity" by Eric Lipton New York Times June 07, 2015
WASHINGTON — After a relatively slow start to his career as a consultant and lobbyist, J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, became very busy in 2010. He was traveling to spots including Singapore and Montreal, meeting with clients about ventures as varied as futures trading and Formula One racing.
He also made an unusual request to one of his business associates: to find a financial adviser who could come up with a plan for an annuity that would generate a substantial cash payout each year. According to the associate, J. David John, the former speaker also asked that the adviser not be told of Hastert’s involvement.
The request came a few weeks before Hastert, as federal prosecutors charged in an indictment, made his first payment to a man known as “Individual A” in what was to be a total of $3.5 million. The money, according to two people briefed on an FBI investigation of Hastert, was paid to prevent the man from publicly saying Hastert sexually abused him decades ago, when Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois.
“I did not think much about it at the time, but looking back at it, it does seem strange,” John said. “He just said he needed to generate some cash.”
In e-mails and other documents provided to The New York Times, accounts of the former speaker’s business dealings show a burst of activity to increase his wealth. But apparently unknown to his business associates, Hastert was not merely following the path of other former members of Congress who have tried to cash in. The indictment says he was seeking to prevent a hidden past from undoing his life.
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But the moves to create an annuity in 2010 and the push by Hastert to rapidly build up his business are detailed in hundreds of pages of e-mails and other documents filed in court records or shared with The Times by an attorney for John.
After Hastert left the House of Representatives in late 2007, John spent more than two years working closely with him on ventures including an effort to persuade Richard M. Daley, then the mayor of Chicago, to hold a Formula One race in Chicago, a land development deal in California and a proposal to move a golf tournament from California to the Middle East.
“I may have stumbled upon a funding source,” Hastert wrote in one e-mail to business partners in 2010 on the proposed Chicago race. “Call me.”
At that point, in the nearly three years since Hastert had left Congress, he had registered on behalf of only four lobbying clients, and the total revenue attributable to this lobbying work in a two-year period equaled just $210,000, congressional records show. (He may have been advising other clients without having to register as a lobbyist.)
But that changed abruptly by 2011, as Hastert was added to his firm’s biggest lobbying account, Lorillard Tobacco Co., and he helped bring in new clients, like ServiceMaster Co., whose former chief executive, like Hastert, is a graduate of Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college west of Chicago.
Hastert and John, another graduate of Wheaton, had bonded over efforts to save funding for the college’s wrestling team in 2002. An entrepreneur who holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the University of Chicago, John, 50, also helped Hastert raise money for the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy at Wheaton. Last week the school dropped Hastert’s name from the center.
There is little evidence that the ventures between Hastert and John paid off for either man. Their relationship ultimately collapsed. John ended up filing lawsuits that raised allegations about possible abuse of public funds by Hastert, who had a taxpayer-funded office to wind down his business as speaker. Courts have twice dismissed one of John’s suits, but he moved to refile the case.
But e-mails sent by Hastert, his former aides, and staff members at his firm, Dickstein Shapiro, offer glimpses into how a high-profile elected official like Hastert makes the transition from public officeholder to a big-money rain maker, a transition that took place, according to federal investigators, at a time of personal crisis.
“There was absolutely nothing at all that struck me as unusual, nothing,” said one executive from CME Group Inc., the Chicago-based futures trading exchange, recalling interactions with Hastert in 2010, while Hastert was on the CME board. Hastert traveled with senior CME executives to Singapore soon after, as the indictment charges, the payments to “Individual A” started.
The executive, who asked not to be identified because of the criminal case, made the trip to Singapore as well. Hastert, who was paid $205,019 in cash and stock awards by CME last year, lost his seat on the board last week.
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Sorry for hiding on the commentary, but who really cares about Hastert? Just another $cum of the political cla$$ that is full of murderous perverts. Period, end of story.
And even if I did, the last place I'm going to find out or learn anything is the Bo$ton Globe. This is only here to show you, the world citizen, what swill and slop the regional flag$hit is shoveling today.
UPDATE: Ex-House speaker Dennis Hastert pleads not guilty
The real kicker is it is the Patriot Act crap he helped shepherd through that resulted in the collection of these records and data.
Also see: Allegations complicate bid to defend Dennis Hastert
UPDATE: Ex-House speaker Dennis Hastert pleads not guilty
The real kicker is it is the Patriot Act crap he helped shepherd through that resulted in the collection of these records and data.
Also see: Allegations complicate bid to defend Dennis Hastert
