That was some misconduct. "Over five years," reports the Washington Post, "Hastert withdrew about $1.7 million in cash from his various bank accounts — at one point in 2014 delivering $100,000 a month to the person in question," that is, the blackmailer. (Maybe extortion isn't what it used to be. "The U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois … would not comment on whether there was any criminal investigation or charges against the person who prompted Hastert’s allegedly illegal transactions.")
Speculation over John Dennis Hastert's "past misconduct" is of the easy sort, given that the former speaker began his career as a teacher and wrestling coach. (Forgive me for the repetition, but this kind of scenario always resurrects in my mind Nabokov's efficient description of the death of Humbert Humbert's mother: "picnic, lightning.") But let's leave that to the scandalmongers who are forever fascinated by others' closeted skeletons. What I find scandalous is that Denny Hastert, entering Congress with assets of $270,000 and then struggling by on congressional salaries ranging from $77,400 to $165,200 (from 1987 to 2006), left Congress with a "worth somewhere between $4 million and $17 million, according to congressional disclosure documents."
Perhaps Meyer Lansky could have taken an average annual paycheck of $121,000 and converted it into millions of banked bucks. Former wrestling coaches, however, are not known for their financial wizardry, and your typical congressman — which, by every appearance, Mr. Hastert was — is not known for any sort of wizardry. How is it, then, that Hastert's rather modest assets ballooned throughout a humble public career, to upwards of $17 million?
I'm not suggesting that there were any Lanskyite illegalities involved. And that is what is so truly scandalous. Bernie Sanders, for instance, whose congressional career exceeds Hastert's by several years, possesses a worth of about $460,000 (mostly from rental property). Yet by legal hook, crook, and connections, Hastert managed to "outperform" Sanders' portfolio by at least tenfold, and possibly as much as thirty-sevenfold. Something here suggests that Hastert's mind was less on his constituents' welfare than on his happy pursuit of personal assets. And it was all legal.
That is to say, American representative democracy is a license to steal, assuming one affords oneself the perfectly acceptable privilege of doing so. At least Hastert's blackmailer got some of his or her dignity back in tangible form. It's the rest of us who really got screwed.