Stephen Buyer is the latest in a series of white collar criminals and fraudsters granted a ‘full, complete and unconditional” pardon by the US President
Donald Trump has used his presidential powers to pardon a former Congressman who was jailed for insider trading.
Stephen Buyer, a former US representative and Republican politician from Indiana, was jailed for 22 months in 2023 after being found guilty of security fraud for engaging in insider trading in 2018 as a T-Mobile US âconsultant ahead of a $23 billion merger with Sprint.
No specific reason was given in the announcement by the White House other than to assert that Buyerâs service as a US Army judge advocate general and member of Congress âwas distinguished and highly productive.â
It â also said that Trump, in granting Buyer a âfull, complete and unconditional pardon,â was acting on the âadvice and recommendationâ of 52 current and former members of the US Senate and House of Representatives listed in the proclamation.
It is the latest pardon from Trump who has been criticised for putting back on the street convicted criminals in controversial circumstances.
Former Honduras President Juan Orlando HernĂĄndez, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from Trump last November.
And Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the worldâs largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.
Buyer served in the House as a Republican from Indiana between 1993 and 2011 before working as a corporate consultant. He was found guilty in March of 2023 on four counts of securities fraud, and was sentenced in September of that year to 22 months in prison.
Prosecutors said âat â trial that Buyer bought Sprint stock after learning from a T-Mobile executive that the telecommunications companies were in merger talks in 2018 and made illegal trades again the following year.
According to prosecutors, Buyer made more than $100,000 from the Sprint trades and more than $200,000 from â buying stock in Navigant Consulting Inc. before it was acquired by Guidehouse in 2019.
Buyer, who had served as one of the House managers in the 1999 impeachment trial of then-President â Bill Clinton, took the stand at his own trial and denied trading on inside information.
Prosecutors sought three years in prison for Buyer in court filings, saying â that he had abused his clients’ trust and lied on the stand.The US Supreme Court refused in May of this year to hear Buyer’s appeal of his conviction.
