On June 6, 2026, President Trump granted a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon” to Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in federal prison for insider trading.
Buyer, 67, was convicted in 2023 of making illegal stock trades on inside information he obtained as a consultant and lobbyist after leaving Congress. The trades were tied to the $26.5 billion T-Mobile/Sprint merger announced in 2018 and to the consulting firm Navigant, which his client Guidehouse was about to acquire. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison, ordered to forfeit more than $350,000 in illegal gains, and fined $10,000. He was released in 2025.
In granting the pardon, Trump cited Buyer's career as an Army judge advocate general and in the House as “distinguished and highly productive”; the clemency request was endorsed by Republican Reps. Tom Cole, Ken Calvert, Marlin Stutzman, Jack Bergman, and Pete Sessions. Buyer claimed the pardon “corrects a politically motivated prosecution.” The clemency adds a convicted Republican insider trader to a long list of pardons granted to Trump allies and donors (see House and Senate Democrats Open an Investigation Into Whether Trump's Pardon Recipients Paid Intermediaries to Reach Him; Letters Sent to More Than a Dozen Recipients).