Sentencing for former Indiana congressman postponed as prosecutors seek $1.4 million in restitution

abcnews.go.com:

Federal prosecutors say a former Indiana congressman should pay nearly $1.4 million to cover the legal bills of companies forced to incur expenses when he was prosecuted on insider trading charges

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors say a former Indiana congressman should pay nearly $1.4 million to cover the legal bills of companies forced to incur expenses when he was prosecuted on insider trading charges. But his lawyer said Thursday it’s an exorbitant amount to demand from a man already suffering financially.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman postponed Steve Buyer's sentencing until July 31. He asked the Probation Department to analyze the $349,846 that prosecutors say Buyer should forfeit as crime proceeds and another $1.39 million he would owe for the legal costs of two companies. Sentencing had been set for next week.

Buyer, 64, a Republican from Noblesville, Indiana, was convicted in March of making illegal stock trades while working as a consultant and lobbyist after a congressional career that stretched from 1993 to 2011.

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.

He 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's lawyers say he should face only home confinement and community service while prosecutors have urged a three-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors said in a letter to the judge on Thursday that Guidehouse is