Prosecutors urge 3-year prison sentence for former US congressman from Indiana

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Indiana congressman who once served as a House prosecutor at former President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial should spend three years in prison for committing insider trading while working as a consultant and lobbyist after his congressional career, prosecutors urged Wednesday.

Steve Buyer, 64, of Noblesville, Indiana, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 for his March conviction by a jury on four securities fraud charges. He served in Congress from 1993 to 2011.

Prosecutors said in a Manhattan federal court submission that the Republican deserves a “substantial sentence of imprisonment” after committing his crimes despite considerable success that had enabled him to amass several million dollars and start a successful business.

“As a former lawyer and member of Congress, he knew the law prohibited his conduct and he chose to break the law anyway to make even more money for himself,” they wrote. "Rather than engaging in fair and legitimate investing activity, the defendant used the illegal edge he got from stealing information from his clients about contemplated mergers and acquisitions to guarantee himself and his loved ones hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits.”

Buyer was convicted in connection with insider trading involving the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018, and stock purchases he made at a later time in the management consulting company Navigant when his client Guidehouse was set to acquire it in a deal publicly disclosed weeks later.

Buyer made over $320,000 illegally for himself, relatives and a woman with whom he had an affair, authorities said.

Earlier this month, Buyer's lawyers told the sentencing judge in a written submission that their client should face only home confinement and community service.

They said Buyer has suffered from a prosecution that has “irreparably damaged his reputation, tarnished his achievements and lifetime of service, and continue to bring shame and humiliation to him and his family."

Prosecutors said the request for no prison term “should be rejected outright as insufficient to achieve the important goal of general deterrence.”

They said the sophistication of the scheme and the manner in which it was carried out “make the crime of insider trading particularly difficult to detect and prosecute.”

Buyer, unlike defendants who face poverty, drug addiction or have limited opportunities, “enjoyed a wholesome family life, is highly intelligent, and was an accomplished professional, reaching the highest levels of government and private practice in this country before committing the crimes at issue in this case,” prosecutors said.

“The defendant had every opportunity to achieve success — and indeed did so — ethically and lawfully. But that was not enough for the defendant. Despite his legitimate success, he chose to engage in behavior he knew to be unlawful in order to line his pockets,” prosecutors wrote.

The lawyer and Persian Gulf War veteran once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee before taking on his role at Clinton’s impeachment trial.