Gabriel Perez, a White House teleprompter operator, was placed on unpaid administrative leave July 16 after ABC News reported he used advance access to President Trump’s prepared remarks to earn more than $100,000 on the prediction market Kalshi. The alleged trading covered more than a dozen speeches over roughly three months. Perez is now discussing a potential settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
How the alleged scheme worked
According to the report, Perez had early access to Trump’s speech texts, which gave him a direct edge in betting on whether certain phrases or topics would be mentioned. The trades were placed on Kalshi, a platform that lets users wager on the outcome of real-world events, including political statements. Perez’s activity spanned from December to March, a period when the operator was regularly handling teleprompter duties.
Kalshi’s surveillance team flagged the unusual trading pattern, investigated it, and eventually referred the case to the CFTC. The company froze about $90,000 in Perez’s account and banned him from the platform, according to NPR. The exact timestamps of when Kalshi flagged, restricted, or referred the account relative to the alleged trades are not publicly known.
Regulatory and platform rules
The CFTC issued an advisory in February warning that misappropriating confidential information in breach of a duty can violate the Commodity Exchange Act and Regulation 180.1. That rule bars fraud or manipulation in connection with commodity trading. Kalshi’s own rulebook explicitly prohibits members who hold material nonpublic information or have influence over an outcome from trading the relevant contract.
The Perez case is part of a broader pattern of insider trading on prediction markets. A separate investigation involves Special Forces personnel and the platform Polymarket, highlighting growing scrutiny of how these markets handle sensitive information.
Kalshi’s timing and new measures
On June 9, Kalshi announced a set of integrity measures, including market risk scores and employment screening. But those changes came after the alleged trading period, which ended in March. The gap raises questions about whether the platform’s safeguards were adequate when Perez was active.
On the same day Perez was placed on leave, Trump Media announced Truth API, a paid data feed for institutional customers that delivers posts from influential accounts, including Trump, in milliseconds. The service is set to begin Aug. 1.
It’s not clear if the CFTC has formally opened an investigation or is still in settlement talks with Perez. The agency declined to comment, and Perez’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment. The case leaves open the question of how prediction markets will handle the risk of insider trading when the insider works inside the White House itself.
