NEW YORK — Former U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer cannot defer his surrender next month to serve a nearly two-year prison sentence resulting from his insider trading conviction because there was overwhelming evidence of his crimes, a federal judge said Monday.
Judge Richard M. Berman ruled there was no substantial question nor any close question of law to warrant letting the Indiana Republican remain free until his appeal is decided. He said prosecutors had presented “compelling testimony and documentary evidence” of Buyer’s crimes and “devastating evidence of an attempted cover-up.”in less than four hours.
The lawyer and Persian Gulf War veteran once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee and was a House prosecutor at ex-President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.last month, Berman said Buyer’s conviction by a jury was not a close call because the evidence against him “screams guilty.” The judge said Buyer lied when he testified at his trial about when he learned about mergers that he profited from.His lawyers did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.