On Wednesday, CBS 2 Chicago reported that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has agreed to a "tentative" settlement with the man who alleges he paid him off to cover up child sex abuse.
"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," said the report. "A Kendall County judge ruled last week that the defendant would be named in court if the case went to trial this month."
Doe alleges that in the 1970s, Hastert, then a wrestling coach at his high school in Yorkville, Illinois, sexually abused him when he was a student athlete. Doe was one of multiple athletes Hastert was accused of molesting. Hastert has argued his innocence, claiming he was treating Doe for a groin injury, but has admitted in court to "mistreating" and "taking advantage of" athletes.
While Hastert could not be prosecuted for abuse due to the statute of limitations, he was nonetheless convicted on bank fraud charges for his hush payments to the victims, and in 2016 was sentenced to 15 months in prison and required to register as a sex offender.
The Democratic co-chair of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus challenged House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to act on his words after the Republican leader conceded Monday that there is wasteful spending at the Pentagon, which has never passed an independent audit.
"We need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon," McCarthy toldCNN, criticizing GOP senators for seeking out ways to expand the military budget beyond the level set in the newly passed debt ceiling agreement.
"Think about it, $886 billion. You don't think there's waste? They failed the last five audits," said McCarthy. "I consider myself a hawk, but I don't want to waste money. So I think we've got to find efficiencies."
The $886 billion figure McCarthy referenced is the military spending topline for fiscal year 2024 that House Republican leaders and the Biden administration agreed to as part of their deal to raise the debt limit.
That spending level, which still must be finalized in the appropriations process, is right in line with President Joe Biden's budget request, which calls for a $28 billion increase over the current military budget of $858 billion.
McCarthy voted for that budget late last year even as critics condemned it as outrageously wasteful.
In response to McCarthy's CNN interview, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.)—who has been demanding cuts to Pentagon spending for years—tweeted that the Republican leader should finally "put his money where his mouth is and bring our 'Audit the Pentagon' bill to the floor."
"There is plenty of waste and fraud at the Pentagon," wrote Pocan, who co-chairs the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus alongside Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).
The bipartisan Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023 would "administer a 0.5% cut to the budget of any office at the Pentagon that does not receive an audit for the first year of the bill's enactment," according to a summary of the legislation. That penalty would rise to 1% in subsequent years, exempting "funding for personnel, families, and military healthcare" from automatic cuts.
Of the bill's 19 co-sponsors, eight are Republicans—though McCarthy is not one of them.
The speaker's remarks Monday came as war hawks in the Senate Republican caucus continued to express dismay over the military spending level set in the debt limit deal, even though it would bring the Pentagon budget to a record high while cutting spending on education, housing programs, and other critical services.
Under the agreement, which drew applause from the CEO of one of the world's leading weapons manufacturers, military outlays would account for nearly 56% of total discretionary spending. But that's apparently not enough for Senate Republicans.
"We're playing a dangerous game with our national security," claimed Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "The bill [McCarthy] produced is inadequate to the threats we face. If the Republican speaker takes the position that we're going to be tough on China... I don't see how we do that with a declining Navy."
Graham and other Republican senators—along with Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.)—are "looking for creative ways to increase the Pentagon budget" beyond the $886 billion topline, Politicoreported last week.
"The most likely vehicle is the next emergency supplemental for Ukraine, which they hope to cram with cash for other Pentagon priorities that normally wouldn't be in the measure," according to Politico. "But doing so could also mean a partisan clash if Democrats oppose reopening the deal through a supplemental without some relief for domestic spending priorities."
The looming fight over Pentagon spending comes months after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report concluding that "the Department of Defense can't accurately account for or report on its physical assets or spending." The department has previously worked to cover up evidence of its massive waste, which is often a boon to arms makers.
Last month, a former top contract negotiator at the Pentagon toldCBS News that "the gouging that takes place" at the Defense Department "is unconscionable," with private companies dramatically overcharging the government for military equipment and other items.
Those comments led a group of senators, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), to demand a Pentagon investigation into price gouging by top government contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
"The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Pentagon chief.
A bus driver in Brooklyn was assaulted and doused with lighter fluid by a mentally disturbed passenger, The New York Post reported.
The incident happened when the driver pulled over the bus and asked passengers to depart after announcing it was out of service. The driver noticed there was one man still on the bus and approached him. The passenger punched the driver multiple times and poured a bottle of lighter fluid over him before fleeing, the Post reported.
In a statement this Tuesday, MTA Senior Vice President of Buses Frank Annicaro condemned the attack.
“Targeting a bus operator with violence is beyond outrageous because attacks on public servants are attacks on all of us,” Annicaro said. “When the NYPD catches this unhinged criminal—and they will—prosecutors should ensure he faces maximum consequences under the law.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) on Tuesday claimed that an FBI mole named "one-eye" was leaking information to Hunter Biden.
During an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Luna suggested whistleblowers informing on the Biden family feared for their lives.
"I mean, between that and to the other point of the FBI is infiltrated — you have a spy by the name of one-eye," she said. "I mean, I say it, I feel like I'm in a James Bond movie, but unfortunately, it's true."
The lawmaker did not know why the FBI could not track down the mole with one eye.
"By the way, the same FBI that's conducting the investigation has a mole that's leaking information to Hunter Biden — probably leaking information on this as well to Hunter Biden," she explained. "I mean, the extent of which the corruption exists is unknown."
Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.
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