Former U.S. Rep. Stephen E. Buyer received a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon” from President Donald Trump on June 4.
“Mr. Buyer’s career serving as a Judge Advocate General in the United States Army and as a Member of the United States House of Representatives from the State of Indiana was distinguished and highly productive,” Thursday’s proclamation stated.
Trump’s proclamation included a long list of individuals who supported the pardon, including Sen. Roger Wicker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Jack Bergman, Rep. Ken Calvert, Rep. Tom Cole, Rep. Pete Sessions, and Rep. Marlin Stutzman.
Buyer represented Indiana in Congress from 1993 to 2011 before becoming a corporate consultant.
The former lawmaker’s career as a consultant led to prison time after he was convicted on four counts of securities fraud for engaging in two separate insider trading schemes in 2018 and 2019.
The first scheme occurred in the spring of 2018, when Buyer purchased shares of Sprint before T-Mobile announced the merger to the public.
Buyer was part of a small group of consultants who were told about the merger in advance by T-Mobile executives.
Leaders from the wireless communications company urged the small group of consultants to keep the information confidential, but Buyer did not. He was convicted of using secret merger information to grow his wealth.
“Buyer breached his duty of confidentiality to T-Mobile and misappropriated that information by purchasing shares of Sprint across several brokerage accounts, including his own accounts, an account held jointly with his cousin, and an account in the name of a close, personal friend,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York wrote in a press release on Sept. 2023.
Prosecutors added that Buyer pocketed “more than $126,000 from the purchase and subsequent sale of Sprint stock after the merger was publicly announced.”
Buyer was accused of a second insider trading incident with different companies the following year.
In 2019, Buyer was accused of engaging in insider trading to make more than $223,000 after learning that the consulting and advisory firm Guidehouse was planning to acquire Navigant Consulting, Inc.
After his conviction in 2023, he was sentenced to 22 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $350,000 in forfeiture and restitution.
“He abused positions of trust for illicit personal gain, and today he faced justice for those acts,” United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said on the day Buyer was sentenced to nearly two years in prison.
Buyer was already released from prison when Trump granted him a full pardon.