Overview
- Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell said Hastert was pronounced dead at his Plano, Illinois, home while under hospice care on Oct. 3, 2026, and that the death was from natural causes with no coroner jurisdiction assumed.
- Hastert served in the U.S. House from 1987 to 2007 and led the chamber as speaker from 1999 to 2007, becoming the longest-serving Republican House speaker and the origin of the informal “Hastert Rule.”
- Federal agents began probing his bank activity in 2013, prosecutors said he made repeated large cash withdrawals tied to roughly $3.5 million paid to a person identified as “Individual A,” and Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to structuring transactions to evade reporting requirements.
- In 2016 he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, ordered to pay a $250,000 fine, undergo sex-offender treatment and serve two years of supervised release, and court filings and prosecutors detailed that he had sexually abused multiple teenage students while a high school coach.
- Hastert’s conviction prompted removal of honors and his portrait from the Capitol and left victims and lawmakers to reckon with a legacy that combined high political power with later criminal disgrace; officials say his death does not appear to trigger any new criminal probe.