James Corbett – The scandal that recently enveloped speaker of the house Dennis Hastert, downplayed as a decades-old story, has already disappeared from the headlines. But a series of revelations from FBI whistleblowers reveal that this story is just the tip of a very seedy iceberg, one that implicates Hastert, his top aide, other Congress members and government officials in a criminal network involved in sexual intrigue, foreign espionage, blackmail, and drug money.

Transcript – In May of this year a federal grand jury indicted former Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert. The charges: that he had “structured” withdrawals of over $950,000 from various bank accounts to skirt bank reporting laws and that he had lied to federal agents about these withdrawals. According to the indictment the withdrawals were part of a bid to pay $3.5 million in blackmail to cover up “past misconduct” from his time as a high school teacher in Illinois. Continue reading →