According to federal prosecutors, Hastert “made payments to a man who was sexually abused at age 14 by Hastert when he was the boy’s wrestling coach. Prosecutors said the abuse also involved ‘other minors,’ and included touching their genitals or engaging in oral sex.” Court filings in Hastert’s case highlighted “private one-on-one encounters in an empty locker room and a motel room with minors that violated the special trust between those young boys and their coach.”

The Republican firebrand is charged with lying to FBI investigators about a tax-evading scheme to pay $3.5 million to keep at least one former student quiet about the abuse before falsely accusing the man of trying to extort him. Hastert pleaded guilty to illegally structuring $900,000 used as hush money to the one individual, a violation of banking laws. Prosecutors are now seeking the harshest possible penalty, asking that the 74-year-old Hastert be sentenced to six months in prison while his attorneys are asking for probation. A former wrestler who said Hastert abused him decades ago is expected to speak at Hastert’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

Still, the longest serving Republican House Speaker in American history has prominent Republican friends rushing to publicly back him even as he’s accused of being a serial child molester.

A list of the names of people who wrote to support Hastert was made public in court Friday, complete with over 40 letters of support for Hastert from the likes of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the head wresting coach of the University of Chicago. Hastert’s defense team said he had received more than 60 letters of support for Hastert in recent months, but nearly 20 writers did not want their letters made public or had requested their letters be “withdrawn” from consideration after disturbing details of Hastert’s pedophilia emerged. (The Chicago Tribune published all of the letters released, and they may be found here):

Hastert’s supporters included a handful of former national and state politicians as well as local leaders, board members, police officers and others from his home base in rural Kendall County.

“We all have our flaws, but Dennis Hastert has very few,” DeLay wrote in his defense of Hastert. “He is a good man that loves the Lord.”

“He doesn’t deserve what he is going through,” the Texas Republican who served as majority leader under Hastert in the early 2000s and who ran into his own legal problems argued. “I ask that you consider the man that is before you and give him leniency where you can.”

DeLay detailed their relationship of nearly three decades, 12 years of which they spent working “side by side.”

“I have observed him in many different and difficult situations,” Delay explained. “He has never disappointed me in any way. He is a man of strong faith that guides him. He is a man of great integrity. He loves and respects his fellow man. I have never witnessed a time when he was unkind to anyone. He is always giving to others and helping anyone including me so many times.”