printTo pep-up the subject of Dennis Hastert, consider a flash from the past in the form of “Entertainment Interruptus,” a column published in November of 2001: “The film Spy Games reached a crescendo as retiring CIA officer Robert Redford transfers $282,000 of his life’s savings to an account in the Cayman Islands. The money is supposed to help pay for the rescue of Redford’s bureau protégé Brad Pitt, who has been ‘burned’ by his employers at the CIA for going solo.”
Only Redford would be unable to complete such a transaction now, not with the new anti-terrorism laws, approved in 2001. Brad Pitt, as the column observed, would have been “burned” by the Patriot Act, which prohibited “suspicious financial transaction”: Move around more than 10,000 of your own dollars, and you’ll likely be the object of a federal investigation.
Dennis Hastert, who approved the Patriot Act, is being hoisted on his own petard.
On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.
Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.
Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later. …
UPDATE (6/10): “The Thin Gruel of the Hastert Prosecution”: We should all be concerned about Dennis Hastert’s strange indictment By SCOTT HORTON.