How Did Denny Hastert Even Have $3.5 Million for Payoffs?
Like Harry Reid, Denny Hastert entered Congress as barely middle class and left it a multi-millionaire (Senators make $174,000 a year -- good money but not enough, I would think, to have $3.5 million tucked away to hand out as cash).
It wasn’t long after that the Sunlight Foundation reported on just how much Hastert thought himself qualified to steer earmarks back home. The foundation found that Hastert had used a secret trust to join with others and invest in farm land near the proposed route of a new road called the Prairie Parkway. He then helped secure a $207 million earmark for the road. The land, approximately 138 acres, was bought for about $2.1 million in 2004 and later sold for almost $5 million, or a profit of 140 percent. Local land records and congressional disclosure forms never identified Hastert as the co-owner of any of the land in the trust. Hastert turned a $1.3 million investment (his portion of the land holdings) into a $1.8 million profit in less than two years.
