President Donald Trump granted a full pardon to Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in prison for insider trading, the White House announced Friday. The pardon was dated Thursday and released by the White House late Friday.
Buyer, 67, was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 after a jury convicted him on charges of insider trading. He was ordered to forfeit more than $350,000 in illegal gains and pay a $10,000 fine. He was released from prison in 2025. The Supreme Court in May rejected Buyer’s appeal without comment or noted dissent.
The conviction stemmed from two sets of trades. Buyer was found to have made illegal stock trades based on inside information about the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018. He also traded illegally in shares of Navigant Consulting, a management consulting company, when his client Guidehouse was set to acquire it in a deal publicly disclosed weeks later.
In the pardon proclamation, Trump cited Buyer’s career as a judge advocate general in the U.S. Army and said he represented Indiana in the House as a “distinguished and highly productive” congressman. Buyer served in the House from 1993 to 2011 and was a House prosecutor for President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial. In 2016, he served on Trump’s transition team focusing on veterans’ issues.
Buyer said the pardon “corrects a politically motivated prosecution” and that it was “horrific to be imprisoned for a crime that I did not commit.” He maintains his innocence.
A letter signed by more than 40 former Republican members of Congress supporting the pardon said Buyer was “targeted by the deep state” because of his involvement in Clinton’s impeachment trial. “Like you, Mr President, Steve has been the victim of lawfare conducted by the Biden Administration,” they wrote in an April 2025 letter.
A second letter, from five current House Republicans, said pardoning Buyer would bring justice to his case. The June 2025 letter was signed by Reps. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, Ken Calvert of California, Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pete Sessions of Texas.
The pardon is the latest in a series of clemency actions by Trump that have benefited Republican figures convicted of financial crimes. The U.S. Constitution gives a president broad power to grant pardons for federal crimes. Pardons do not erase a recipient’s criminal record but can be seen as an act of mercy or justice.