Dennis Hastert, the Illinois Republican who held the speaker’s gavel longer than any other Republican, died Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, at his home in Plano, in Kendall County, where he had been in hospice care, the Kendall County coroner’s office said. He was 84.

The coroner’s office announced the death Monday, Oct. 5, and said Coroner Jacquie Purcell had confirmed that John Dennis Hastert died of natural causes at home.

Questions Over the Cause

The office issued a further statement saying it did not take the case and released the matter to the attending hospice physician. “Following a review of the circumstances and consultation with hospice personnel, the Kendall County Coroner’s Office determined that the death did not meet the criteria for coroner jurisdiction,” the statement said.

The office said the attending hospice physician “is responsible for completing the death certification, including determining and certifying the cause of death.” As of Oct. 5, the official cause was to be certified by the physician, not the coroner. The coroner’s office has not released the physician’s name.

Hastert held the speaker’s gavel longer than any other Republican. A federal case rooted in accusations that he molested teenage wrestlers sent him to prison.

Prison Term in Hush-Money Case

Prosecutors charged him in 2015 with evading banking regulations as part of a scheme to pay hush money concealing unspecified “prior misconduct.” Nearly a year later, prosecutors filed papers spelling out the misconduct: boys in their teens on the wrestling team he coached had been sexually abused by him.

At least four of those team members were abused by him between 1965 and 1981, Prosecutors said. Court papers identified the man he was paying only as Individual A, whose account placed the abuse in a motel room on the way home from wrestling camp, when he was 14. Sex acts were performed on them by Hastert, Two wrestlers said.

Of the $3.5 million he had promised Individual A, more than $1.7 million was handed over, at times as cash lump sums of $100,000.

A trial was avoided when Hastert pleaded guilty to the financial charge in 2015. The following year a judge handed down a sentence of 15 months behind bars, a punishment that put him among the highest-ranking American politicians ever ordered to prison. The visibly angry judge called him a “serial child molester.”

Hastert told the court he was “deeply ashamed,” and while he conceded that he had mistreated certain of his athletes, sexual abuse went unmentioned in his remarks. The statute of limitations had expired, so no abuse charge was ever brought against him.

A prison hospital released him in 2017, several weeks ahead of schedule, after he had served about 13 months.

Dozens of former speakers look down from the walls of the Speaker’s lobby just off the House floor; as the revelations spread, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) removed Hastert’s portrait from that room.

From Wrestling Mat to Congress

Hastert was born and raised in rural Illinois and was a standout athlete. His early 20s brought him a job teaching and coaching at the high school level. Yorkville High School, in a small town west of Chicago, employed him for 16 years as a coach, and the wrestling program he built there captured a state championship. Illinois Coach of the Year was the title he earned in 1976.

A seat in the Illinois House came his way five years later, and winning it took him out of teaching; he served three terms there. Voters elected him to the U.S. House in 1986, and the former history teacher spent two decades in Congress, from 1987 to 2007.

In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known lawmaker whose reputation for congeniality carried him up the leadership ladder. Republicans expected to gain seats in the 1998 midterms while the Monica Lewinsky scandal dogged President Bill Clinton; Democrats picked up seats instead. Ethics violations had already weakened Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who lost the support of his conference. Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) was widely viewed as a lock to replace him but resigned after acknowledging extramarital affairs, and the job fell to Hastert.

In his first weeks as speaker, he presided over the House while the Senate conducted Clinton’s impeachment trial. The House formally elected him speaker Jan. 6, 1999, as the 106th Congress convened. He recounted his ascent in a memoir, “Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics.”

Eight Years With the Gavel

Hastert was speaker from 1999 to 2007 — eight years, longer than any other Republican in U.S. history. Much of President George W. Bush’s agenda cleared the chamber under his management, among it the massive tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and a prescription drug benefit expansion that represented Medicare’s biggest change in decades. Bush credited his counsel and his loyalty.

He was in power on Sept. 11, 2001, and he presided over the House as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were launched. He also left a procedural legacy: under an informal policy he set, a bill would not reach the floor unless more than half of all Republicans backed it. The “Hastert rule” still shapes how the House operates.

Democrats won control of the chamber in 2007, prompting him to give up the gavel, and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) succeeded him as speaker. He then announced he would not seek reelection in 2008, ending his tenure before his 11th term was out.

Hastert was married and had two sons.