The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating after Kalshi personnel admitted that President Donald Trump’s teleprompter operator won around $100,000 trading on Kalshi on what Trump’s speeches would include.
Numerous media outlets including ABC News reported Thursday that Trump’s longtime staffer Gabriel Perez bet on more than a dozen of Trump’s speeches over a three-month period, including his State of the Union address in February. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump’s regular teleprompter operator is suspending pending further investigation.
“Obviously, I’m aware of the report,” Leavitt said, according to CNBC. “The president is too. I spoke with him about it. He believes it’s deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace. The individual that was cited in that report is complying with the CFTC, but has been put on paid administrative leave. So, there will be a teleprompter operator tonight, of course, but it will not be the one, unfortunately.
Perez, who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is reportedly in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations.
Trump teleprompter operator live-bet on speeches?
The ABC News report adds that not only does Perez usually see Trump’s prepared remarks before he makes them to camera via a teleprompter, but Perez even altered his Kalshi trading activity on occasions when Trump went off-script.
Investigators uncovered times when Perez would abandon bets midway through Trump’s speeches if the President ended up not speaking out loud a word that was included in his prepared remarks.
ABC News added that Perez acknowledged some of the trading activity in an interview with regulators, and that the CFTC is willing to settle with the Trump confidant. Federal prosecutors reportedly opted not to open a criminal inquiry.
Kalshi says it flagged mention market trades
Kalshi Head of Enforcement Robert DeNault told SBC Americas in a statement that the company identified and investigated the trades and referred them to the CFTC.
“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation,” DeNault said. “We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral.”
Kalshi surveillance flagged Trump speech ‘mention market’ trades in March because they stood out as contradicting typical patterns of buying and/or selling. Market makers also flagged some irregularities. Upon investigation, the company discovered the user in question was employed by the federal government and was a teleprompter operator.
According to Kalshi, the company froze the account and more than $90,000 from the relevant trades, interviewed Perez, and referred the case to the CFTC. The investigation has been ongoing for months.
When asked by SBC Americas to speak more to the potential integrity concerns around ‘mention markets’, Kalshi said only that it surveils those markets like it does any other. As of the time of writing, Kalshi lists a market on what Trump will say in his address to the nation tonight, July 16.
Where does Trump stand on prediction markets?
Trump’s own public stance on prediction market platforms has wavered.
Earlier this year, the President said that he was “never much in favor” of being able to bet on prediction markets.
Just a few weeks later, he posted on his Truth Social platform to stress that it is “critically important” to uphold what he called the CFTC’s exclusive authority over event contracts. In the same post, he labeled several state governors (all of them Democrats) as “scum” in apparent reference to the enforcement and legal actions they have taken against prediction market platforms.
Meanwhile, Trump’s son, Donald Jr., serves as an advisor to both Kalshi and its rival Polymarket, and reportedly was given around equity shares in Kalshi worth around $300,000 at the time he began his affiliation with the firm in early 2025. Kalshi’s value is now touted through funding rounds as around 10 times what it was back then.
Latest prediction markets insider trading furor
Trump’s teleprompter operator profiting from pre-determined speeches is the latest in a growing list of examples of alleged or confirmed instances of insider trading on politically related prediction markets, including:
- U.S. Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke’s arrest for allegedly using classified information to earn more than $400,000 by trading Polymarket contracts related to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
- Accusations that a Google employee bet on user searches using internal company data
- Allegations that former Rep. George Santos traded on Kalshi on whether he would appear at the State of the Union address, which he no-showed
In March, the White House issued a memo to warn its staff against insider trading on prediction markets. Kalshi says it has a policy against users placing bets based on information they can access as part of their jobs, and CFTC Chair Michael Selig told a Congressional committee in April that the agency has a “zero-tolerance” policy on insider trading.
The Senate banned its staff from trading on prediction markets on April 30 and numerous bills filed in Congress aim to implement various restrictions with the aim of curbing insider trading.
