Former Speaker Dennis Hastert's Settlement In Hush Money Case To Be Finalized Monday
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) -- This coming Monday, former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert will finalize a legal settlement with a man who accused him of child sex abuse.
The accuser claims Hastert refused to pay nearly $2 million in agreed-upon hush money.
The man, referred to only as James Doe in filings, brought the breach-of-contract lawsuit in 2016 in a bid to force Hastert to pay the unpaid balance of the hush money, nearly $2 million. Hastert's lawyers said the 2010 deal was void after Doe spoke about it to others.
The man says Hastert sexually abused him when he was a student athlete and Hastert was a wrestling coach at a high school in Yorkville in the 1970s.
Hastert has denied having any sexual contact with his accuser, saying he was treating him for a groin injury.
The roughly $1.5 million Hastert did pay over four years in $50,000 cash installments prompted a criminal investigation in 2014. Hastert's methods for structuring the cash withdrawals so they wouldn't be flagged tipped off the FBI, initiating the probe and eventually making his abuse of Doe and others public.
Hastert stopped making payments after FBI agents questioned him.
The two sides reached a settlement last week, just days before the case went to trial.
No details of the settlement have been released.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
