Dennis Hastert, longest-serving Republican House speaker, dies at 84; pleaded guilty to bank crimes

Dennis Hastert, the Republican who served as U.S. House speaker from 1999 to 2007, has died at age 84, Fox News reported Oct. 6, 2026; the outlet said he had pleaded guilty to bank-related crimes and served federal prison time.

Fox News reported that Hastert died of natural causes. The outlet wrote that federal prosecutors in 2015 flagged large cash withdrawals by Hastert and investigated what regulators described as payments used to conceal sexual misconduct from decades earlier.

According to Fox News, Hastert pleaded guilty to bank-related charges, served 13 months of a 15-month sentence at a federal facility in Rochester, Minnesota, and returned to private life after his release. The report says prosecutors dropped a charge of making false statements in the case.

Fox News also reported that U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin described Hastert in court as “a serial child molester.” The outlet said prosecutors did not bring criminal sex charges against Hastert, who in court admitted he had “mistreated athletes” during his years as a high-school teacher and coach in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Fox News piece recounted Hastert’s rise to the Speakership after the 1998 resignation of a Speaker-designee and noted he held the gavel from January 1999 until 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican Speaker in U.S. history, according to the report.

Fox News’ account placed the later revelations about Hastert’s past in the context of other Capitol controversies, including the 2006 Mark Foley page messages and the 1998 Speaker succession, and said Hastert largely avoided public attention after leaving Congress.

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