CFTC probes White House aide for $100K in insider bets on Trump speeches

A White House teleprompter operator with advance knowledge of President Donald Trump's speeches allegedly made more than $100,000 betting on what the president would say, in the first known insider trading case involving a federal employee on prediction markets.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating Gabriel Perez, a deputy assistant to the president who has operated Trump's teleprompter since 2016, for placing bets on Kalshi's "Mentions" market, where users wager on whether specific words or phrases appear in public speeches, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

"Even his teleprompter guy is corrupt," one user wrote on Bluesky after the investigation was reported.

Kalshi alerted the CFTC after its surveillance team flagged suspicious trading patterns linked to Perez, who made more than $90,000 in profits from the trades, according to one source. The profits have been frozen. Kalshi's head of enforcement, Robert DeNault, said in a statement that the company "promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators."

The investigation covers bets placed on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including the February State of the Union address, a December primetime address, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Trump's March remarks during a Medal of Honor ceremony. In certain instances, investigators found that Perez would back out of bets mid-speech when Trump skipped over portions of prepared remarks, the sources said.

Perez, whose official title is deputy assistant to the president and technical advisor, earns a $175,000 annual salary, according to a White House report submitted to Congress. He sat for an interview with CFTC regulators in recent months and acknowledged some of the trades, sources said. The CFTC alerted federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who declined to open a criminal investigation.

White House Response and Broader Crackdown

The White House issued an internal memo on March 24 warning staff against using nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets, saying "the misuse of nonpublic information by government employees for financial benefit is a very serious offense and will not be tolerated." White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said the staffer "is fully cooperating with the CFTC."

CFTC Chair Mike Selig, a Trump appointee, has pledged to crack down on insider trading on prediction markets, including if it came from the White House. The Trump-era CFTC has broadly championed prediction markets as a regulatory category, even as state gambling regulators have challenged their legality.

The case marks a significant test for prediction market oversight. The Department of Justice in recent months brought the first two criminal cases of insider trading on prediction markets — against a special forces soldier who allegedly bet on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and a Google employee who allegedly bet on user searches using internal company data. Both pleaded not guilty.

Kalshi has since updated its policies to require users to disclose their place of employment. "If you have information by virtue of your job or your employment, something that you have a legal duty surrounding, and you have an obligation not to take that, misappropriate it for yourself," DeNault told ABC News in May.

Regulators at the CFTC have expressed a willingness to settle with Perez and have discussed terms requiring him to return his profits and refrain from making similar trades, according to sources familiar with the ongoing discussions. Perez continues to serve in his White House role.

Trump has occasionally criticized prediction markets but said in April he supports them because the United States could be "left out in the cold" if it does not allow companies like Kalshi and Polymarket to operate. His social media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, announced last October it was exploring launching its own prediction market offering.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.