Federal regulators are examining whether the president’s teleprompter operator used advance knowledge of speech drafts to win on a Kalshi market, the clearest example yet of the insider problem that has trailed prediction markets all year.
- The CFTC is investigating Gabriel Perez, President Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, over trades on the prediction market Kalshi, according to multiple news reports
- Perez allegedly bet on which words and phrases the president would say, using a “mention market” while having early access to the speeches themselves
- Reports put his winnings above $100,000, though Kalshi says it froze the account with more than $90,000 still sitting on the platform
- Kalshi’s own surveillance flagged the trades and referred them to regulators; Perez is on unpaid leave and the White House says he is cooperating
- No charges have been filed, and the case has become the headline example in a wider fight over insider trading on prediction markets
It is the scenario prediction-market skeptics have warned about for a year, and it just landed inside the White House. A federal regulator is looking into whether one of the few people who sees the president’s speeches before he gives them used that access to win bets on what he would say.
What Regulators Are Investigating
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is examining Gabriel Perez, President Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016, over trades he allegedly placed on prediction markets, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Perez is among the handful of aides trusted with the president’s remarks and is often the last person to review a speech before delivery. According to the reporting, that access is the crux of the concern: regulators are weighing whether he traded on nonpublic information, the definition of insider activity. CNN described it as the first known instance of a White House employee tied to a prediction-market insider scheme. No charges have been filed, and Perez is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
How a “Mention Market” Works
The wagers ran through Kalshi’s “mention markets,” a product that turns a speech into a betting board. Instead of predicting an election or a game, traders buy and sell contracts on whether a public figure will say particular words or phrases during an address, everything from country names and economic terms to campaign slogans. For most users it is a guessing game about a live event. For someone holding the finished script in advance, the reporting alleges, it is closer to knowing the answer before the question is asked. That gap between public guesswork and private certainty is exactly what makes the case a clean illustration of the market’s vulnerability.
The Money, and What Kalshi Did
The amounts reported vary, and the distinction matters. Sources told ABC News that Perez won more than $100,000 across the State of the Union and more than a dozen other speeches. Kalshi, for its part, said it froze the account before most of the money could be withdrawn, leaving upward of $90,000 on the platform. Notably, the referral did not come from a government tip. Kalshi’s surveillance team caught the pattern itself and flagged it. “Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC,” the company’s enforcement chief said, adding that Kalshi is assisting regulators. According to sources cited by ABC, Perez sat for an interview with regulators, acknowledged some of the trades, and may be in talks to settle; those details rest on anonymous sourcing and have not been confirmed on the record.
The White House Response
Perez has been placed on unpaid leave. A White House spokesman said the administration holds staff to strict ethics guidelines and that the employee is cooperating with the CFTC, while press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the alleged conduct a disgrace. The response lands against the administration’s own paper trail: a March memo had already warned staff that using nonpublic government information to trade on prediction markets is a serious offense, language employees were told to take literally. That a warning existed, and the alleged trading continued anyway, is part of why the case has drawn attention well beyond the gambling world.
Not the First Warning Sign
The Perez matter fits a pattern that has followed prediction markets through their breakout year. Federal prosecutors earlier charged a special operations soldier with winning more than $400,000 on Polymarket using classified information about a mission to capture Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Separately, watchdogs have pointed to suspiciously timed trades ahead of major presidential announcements. Each episode circles the same weakness: markets built on narrow, real-world outcomes reward anyone with a peek behind the curtain, the same flaw at the center of the sports prop scandals that have rocked the leagues.
Why the CFTC Is in a Bind
The investigation puts the agency in an awkward spot, because the current CFTC has been friendly to the very industry it now has to police. The commission has broadly welcomed prediction markets even as critics argue it has been slow to build guardrails against insider trading. Its chair, a Trump appointee, has publicly pledged to pursue insider cases wherever they lead, including inside the White House, a promise this investigation now tests directly. How aggressively the agency moves will signal whether its oversight of the sector has teeth.
What Happens Next
For now, this is an open investigation, not a resolved case, and much of the detail comes from unnamed sources rather than a charging document or an official finding. Regulators could settle, pursue penalties such as banning Perez from trading and clawing back profits, or close the matter. Lawmakers are watching too: the Senate has already moved to bar its own members from trading on prediction markets, and the House is weighing similar limits. Whatever the outcome for one teleprompter operator, the case has handed the broader debate over the U.S. gambling landscape its most concrete example yet of how these markets can be gamed from the inside, arriving just as their trading volume has overtaken sports betting.