YORKVILLE, Illinois (AP) – Once powerful former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and a man accused of child sexual abuse reached an out-of-court interim settlement Wednesday because of Hastert’s refusal to pay $ 1.8 million in exchange for the man’s silence, lawyers for the two men said.
Lawyers did not disclose the details of the settlement in the case, which was scheduled to go to trial next week in an Illinois court.
Only the man has been named as James Doe in court documents since the lawsuit for breach of contract was filed in 2016. He had said Hastert only paid him about half of the promised $ 3.5 million.
Federal prosecutors said during a related criminal case that he sent Hastert to jail for more than a year the deal was voluntarily signed and the victim never tried to blackmail the Illinois Republican into making public about the abuse. It happened when the victim was a high school wrestler and the current Hastert, 79, was his coach.
Hastert paid $ 1.7 million in four years, but stopped payments after in 2014 the FBI questioned him about illegally concealing large cash withdrawals from his bank. After Hastert pleaded guilty to a bank charge and was convicted in 2016, the victim sued for breach of contract to force Hastert to pay the $ 1.8 million outstanding.