As his administration promotes what it calls a crackdown on fraud in states run by Democrats, Donald Trump once again used the pardon power to excuse financial crimes committed by a Republican, granting a pardon this week to Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in prison for making illegal stock trades based on inside information after he left office.
Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 for trades made while working as a consultant and lobbyist. He was ordered to forfeit more than $350,000, representing the amount of the illegal gains, and pay a $10,000 fine. He was released in 2025.
The supreme court in May rejected Buyer’s appeal without comment or noted dissent.
In granting “a full, complete, and unconditional pardon”, Trump cited Buyer’s career as a judge advocate general in the US army and said he represented Indiana in the House as a “distinguished and highly productive” congressman. The pardon was dated Thursday and released by the White House late Friday.
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 that he is innocent.
Last month, Trump posted a pair of letters requesting a presidential pardon for Buyer, a lawyer and Gulf war veteran who left office in 2011. He was a House prosecutor for Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial, and in 2016 he served on Trump’s transition team focusing on veterans’ issues.
A letter signed by more than 40 former Republicans in Congress said Buyer was “targeted by the deep state” because of his involvement in Clinton’s trial. The list of current and former Republican lawmakers who supported Buyer was included in the pardon posted on the White House website.
“Like you, Mr President, Steve has been the victim of lawfare conducted by the Biden Administration,” they wrote in the 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 Tom Cole of Oklahoma, Ken Calvert of California, Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pete Sessions of Texas.
Buyer, 67, was convicted in connection with insider trading involving the $26.5bn merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018, and illegal trades in the management consulting company Navigant when his client Guidehouse was set to acquire it in a deal publicly disclosed weeks later.
The US constitution gives a president broad power to grant pardons for federal crimes. The pardons do not erase a recipient’s criminal record but can be seen as an act of mercy or justice.
