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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to drop its civil insider trading case against Stephen Buyer more than two months after President Donald Trump pardoned the former Indiana congressman.
Buyer, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2011, was pardoned by Trump in June after being sentenced in 2023 to nearly two years in prison regarding trades made while working as a consultant and a lobbyist.
The White House announced in June “a full, complete and unconditional pardon” for Buyer, with Trump citing in part Buyer’s military service. Buyer said then that the pardon “corrects a politically motivated prosecution” and that it was “horrific to be imprisoned for a crime that I did not commit.”
The SEC had sued Buyer in 2022, accusing him of generating more than $335,729 in illicit profits through illegal trades, according to the initial complaint. The complaint stated that in 2018 Buyer, a consultant for T-Mobile US Inc., learned that the company planned to acquire the Sprint Corp. before the general public knew, and he used that information to purchase shares of Sprint stock.
The agency did not explain its reason for dropping the case in a brief federal court filing Monday, other than to note that it “believes the dismissal of this case is appropriate.”
The agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York bars Buyer from suing the SEC in connection with the case.
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