Former Hastert Staffer, Yorkville High Wrestler, Silent on Mentor's Plight

Bryan Harbin made well over six figures to work as an administrative assistant to Dennis Hastert when the former Speaker of the House left office in 2007. He also was on Hastert’s congressional staff for years, and before that wrestled under Coach Hastert on the Yorkville High School wrestling team.

Harbin, 54, has known Hastert all his adult life. But since Hastert, 73, was charged with evading federal banking regulations and lying to the FBI about his bank withdrawals, Harbin has been silent, refusing to answer questions or return messages left at his home, with his daughter and on his wife’s work voicemail.

Hastert, the longest-serving Republican U.S. Speaker of the House in American history and one of Illinois’ most respected political figures in recent memory, agreed to pay someone $3.5 million to keep quiet about alleged sexual behavior he engaged in while he was the wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, federal sources told the Chicago Tribune.

Hastert withdrew $1.7 million from several banks between 2010 to 2014 and gave the cash to a person identified as “Individual A” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Sources told the Tribune the misconduct was sexual in nature and dates to Hastert’s time as a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville. He worked at the high school from 1965, after graduating from college, to 1981, when he entered politics with run for the state legislature.

Harbin graduated from Yorkville High as the Homecoming King in 1979. He wrestled for Hastert and went on to work as his district director and then to collect a salary of more than $100,000 as Hastert’s office assistant back in Yorkville. Harbin was one of three staffers in Hastert’s post-speaker administrative office. He’s the only long-term staffer known to hail from the region where Hastert grew up and began his career.

The $138,551 salary was footed by taxpayers, “thanks to a little-known perk given to ex-speakers,” according to a 2010 story in the Tribune.

“Federal law allows former House speakers to maintain a taxpayer-funded office anywhere in the United States for up to five years,” the Tribune reported. “The purpose is to ‘facilitate the administration, settlement and conclusion of matters pertaining to or arising out of’ a former speaker’s tenure in the House.”

It is not clear what Harbin has been up to since he left Hastert’s employ about three years ago. A source said he owns rental properties but has no job.

Harbin would not respond to questions about his past and current relationship with Hastert, or his knowledge of “Individual A.”

NBC News reported on Sunday that “Individual A” is not extorting Hastert, which is why federal prosecutors have not brought charges against this person. Rather, Hastert and “Individual A” voluntarily entered into a financial arrangement.

In his 2004 book, “Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics,” Hastert lists Harbin in the acknowledgements, thanking him and many others for “helping to make this book a reality.” Harbin is mentioned right after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

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