Sandy Rios, the American Family Association’s director of governmental affairs, defended Dennis Hastert on her radio program today, wondering if the former House speaker’s indictment in an alleged scheme to cover up a sexual abuse scandal was “political payback” for his time in Congress.

Insisting that she was not defending Hastert’s alleged actions, Rios said that the FBI should instead be focused on prosecuting Bill and Hillary Clinton in the phony Clinton Foundation scandal. She added that she is just asking the question as to whether Hastert is the victim of “political payback” for his time as a Republican leader in Congress.

“I have to ask if this is political payback, you have to ask that,” Rios said, before comparing Hastert’s prosecution to the “outing” of politicians who vote against gay rights bills, saying: “The Right generally doesn’t out people, I’m not saying they never do but it’s usually the Left that does it, there was a whole squad of gay activists who outed closeted gay men who were not voting the way they thought they should, probably ten years ago it was very actively done…. You just wonder if this was about justice or if this was about ruining the man.”