Hastert's laundry

There's one part of the dodgy Hastert real-estate deal that I haven't seen answered. Was the property Hastert's primary residence? I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere that it was. If it was his primary residence, he doesn't have to record the asset/transaction/mortgage in his financial disclosure forms.
(update: the house was his primary residence, according to this)

Beyond that, I seem to have caught Hastert telling lies on his financial disclosure records.

Update: this post is a bit of mess. The significance of the information here, if any, is that two days after Duke Cunningham was exposed, Hastert rushed to file an amendment to his financial disclosure records - adding his $2million home/farm.

According to the Washington Post:

"In 2002, Hastert was driving to a parade in Sycamore, Ill., when he saw a post-and-beam house he fell in love with, according to Dallas C. Ingemunson, a longtime friend and ally of Hastert's who made the land deals for the speaker. Hastert struck a deal with the owner on the spot, purchasing the house near Plano, Ill., and 195 acres for $2.1 million."

In Hastert's 2002 filings, there was no mention of the property - no asset, no liability, no transaction, and no mention of his home/farm.

The same is true for the 2003 filing.

WaPo again:

"In February 2004, Ingemunson, treasurer of Hastert's campaign committee and chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party, established Little Rock Trust #225. A week later, through the trust, Hastert and his business partners purchased a 69-acre parcel for $340,000, providing road access to part of Hastert's farm that had been landlocked. Hastert owned a quarter of that parcel."

On May 16, 2005, Hastert filed his personal 2004 financial report. Hastert listed his share of the 69-acre parcel as :

Asset Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Transaction Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Mortgage Value
1/4 share, value $250k-$500k

Note: I'm pretty sure here that we've caught Hastert, or someone, in a mistake. Hastert is clearly saying in his filings that his one-quarter share is worth between $250-500k - but WaPo appears to say that these 69 acres are worth $340k in entirety, and Hastert only has a quarter share.

Having said that, the media reports are quite confusing

Here's how SunTimes describes it:

"Ingemunson told the Sun-Times that the three bought the 68.9-acre parcel from a farmer who wanted "to have cash immediately." Klatt, Ingemunson and Hastert formed a trust, which bought the land in 2004 for $15,000 an acre -- a total price of slightly more than $1 million."

SunTimes suggests that the total price for this block was $1.05M. WaPo says the price was $340k. Hastert says that his quarter share was worth between $250-500k - which would appear to sugggest that WaPo is wrong. Where did WaPo get their $340k number from? I'm sure that number didn't come out of the blue. WaPo - where did your $340k come from?

WaPo:

"In May 2005, Hastert transferred the 69 acres of previously hemmed-in land from his farm to the land trust."

The exact date of that transfer is not obvious - was it after or before the original filing on May 16? (note that this 69-acres that Hastert transferred to Little Rock Trust is separate to the 69-acres that Little Rock Trust bought from a third-party.)
(update: the transaction occured May 2, 2005 (link))

Lo, just one month after that filing, on June 14 2005 Hastert resubmitted both his 2003 and 2004 filings in "an abundance of caution" - without adding any detail about why he was resubmitting it. The 2005 amendment of the 2004 records adds:

Asset Value
1/4 share, 69 acres- value: $250-$500k
Home/Property - $1m-$5m

Mortgage
Home/Property - $1m-$5m

(Note that this was the first time that Hastert's 'home/property' was disclosed in his personal financial records. why did he include it if primary residence is always exluded? )

Do you think that it was all completely above-board? or was Hastert's retrospective accounting somehow related to the deal that took place in May 05?

(updated 10 minutes after publication to add that Hastert's 'amendment' occured 2 days after Stern's original article about Duke Cunningham's real-estate deal hit the wires)

Similarly, I haven't been able to ascertain how much Little Rock paid Hastert for the transfer of the other 69 acres. Did Hastert pay taxes on it? Was it all a fuzzy 'book exercise'?

WaPo:

"Then, on Dec. 7, (05) Little Rock Trust #225 sold the Hastert parcels to a subsidiary of the Robert Arthur Land Co. for nearly $5 million. The deal netted Hastert a $2 million profit."

Suntimes:

*In December 2005, the 68.9-acre parcel and the 69.5-acre parcel were sold to a developer, which wants to build at least 1,700 residential units plus commercial space there.

It's all a bit confusing. At a minimum, we can see that he amended his financial disclosures with respect to this particularly dodgy investment.

First things first - Hastert appears to have not originally disclosed the Plano asset in his disclosure forms. Can any journalist out there check to see if it was actually his primary residence? Also - presumably WaPo's $340k number came from somewhere. where?

And the ultimate question, was Denny trying to launder his bribes?

update: miguel in the comments points to this post at Sunlight Foundation which notes that the property was indeed Hastert's primary residence.


(cross-posted)

Hastert's Little Rock Trust

* josh:

"Good work: the Hastert earmark scam makes it into the Washington Post. "

that's what qualifies for 'good work' these days? at least they front-paged the story.

* at least wapo adds some detail:

"In 2002, Hastert was driving to a parade in Sycamore, Ill., when he saw a post-and-beam house he fell in love with, according to Dallas C. Ingemunson, a longtime friend and ally of Hastert's who made the land deals for the speaker. Hastert struck a deal with the owner on the spot, purchasing the house near Plano, Ill., and 195 acres for $2.1 million.

In February 2004, Ingemunson, treasurer of Hastert's campaign committee and chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party, established Little Rock Trust #225. A week later, through the trust, Hastert and his business partners purchased a 69-acre parcel for $340,000, providing road access to part of Hastert's farm that had been landlocked. Hastert owned a quarter of that parcel.

In May 2005, Hastert transferred the 69 acres of previously hemmed-in land from his farm to the land trust. That summer, Hastert personally intervened during House and Senate negotiations over a huge transportation and infrastructure bill to secure two separate earmarks, $152 million to help build the Prairie Parkway through Kendall County and $55 million for an interchange 5 1/2 miles from his property. President Bush signed the bill into law on Aug. 10.

Then, on Dec. 7, Little Rock Trust #225 sold the Hastert parcels to a subsidiary of the Robert Arthur Land Co. for nearly $5 million. The deal netted Hastert a $2 million profit."

Good to see WaPo actually note that Ingemunson is Hastert's treasurer as well. I hadn't seen that reported elsewhere.

Wapo adds:

"Hastert's attorney, J. Randolph Evans, fired off a letter to the Sunlight Foundation last week, demanding "that the false, libelous and defamatory matter be immediately withdrawn and corrected." In his letter, Evans said that asserting that a new road project would have an impact on land values more than 5 1/2 miles away "would be like complaining about a purchase in Alexandria, Virginia, based on renovations at the Capitol.""

Randy Evans also 'fired off a letter' to Vanity Fair when David Rose's article came out - with much more serious allegations. It's not obvious why those allegations, and that rebuttal, didn't make the front page of wapo.

more soon.

more of Hastert's ill-gotten gains

TPMM:

The Chicago Tribune puts a number on Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) killing on that real estate deal: $1.5 million.

And here are the basics, first reported by the Sunlight Foundation yesterday.

Hastert acquired the first part of the land in August, 2002, a 69 acre portion of a 196-acre farm purchased under his wife's name. The rest was acquired by a land trust in Feburary, 2004 of which Hastert had a quarter interest - the two partners were Dallas Ingemunson ("a long-time supporter and political mentor to Hastert who is chairman of the Kendall County Republican Party") and Thomas Klatt ("a local trucking company owner who also has been a long-time supporter and campaign contributor to Hastert").

The funding for the Prairie Parkway, which will run 5.5 miles from the plot, went through in the Fall of 2005. Three months after that, in December, Hastert and his partners cashed out, selling the land to a developer for a $3 million total profit. Ingemunson told the Tribune that Hastert's share of that was five-eighths - about $1.5 million. (The Chicago Sun-Times, without attribution, reports the profit as "close to $2 million.")

Now Hastert's camp is focused on squashing the story with the line that 5.5 miles isn't close enough to affect the price of the plot. In fact, they're so up in arms that Hastert's lawyer wrote an angry letter to the Sunlight Foundation and have threatened legal action. But no amount of yelling will change the facts on the table.

Update: ThinkProgress has a graphic timeline of the land deal.

Nice deal, Denny.

Of course, Ingemunson is also treasurer of Hastert For Congress Committee PAC. We had some questions over at Disclose Denny about whether Ingemunson should have signed off on the FEC affadavit - rather than delegate to his deputy.

Hastert: Real (estate) Corruption

* tpmm:

"Over at the Sunlight Foundation, they've found Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) taking a page from Rep. Ken Calvert's (R-CA) investment playbook.
For years, Hastert has been pushing the construction of a highway called the Prairie Parkway in Illinois. He secured $207 million in earmarks to support the project. But what he didn't tell constituents was that he owned a huge plot of farmland just a few miles from where the road would run. And now that the project's gone through, the land has been tranferred to a real estate development firm with plans to build a 1,600 home community. The land has already improved in value by millions of dollars.

I wonder how much Hastert will ultimately make on the deal?"

I've looked at Hastert's financial records before - this property was listed as being basically worthless.