A White House teleprompter operator accused of using advance access to President Donald Trump’s speeches to place lucrative bets on a regulated prediction market has left his government post while a federal regulatory investigation continues.
A White House official, speaking anonymously because they were not authorised to discuss personnel matters, told the Associated Press that Gabriel Perez “no longer works in the federal government”. The official did not say whether Perez resigned or was removed from his role.
Perez had already been placed on administrative leave earlier this month after ABC News reported he had allegedly made more than $100,000 by trading contracts on Kalshi linked to specific words Trump was expected to use in high-profile speeches, including his State of the Union address.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, addressing the claims in July, said the allegations were “deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace,” and confirmed that President Trump had been made aware of the situation.
Access to Trump’s speeches under scrutiny
According to ABC News, Perez had been involved with Trump’s speeches since the 2016 presidential campaign, giving him advance access to prepared remarks that were not yet public. Sources familiar with the inquiry told the outlet that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has tied a series of Kalshi trades to speeches for which Perez is believed to have had early sight of the text.
Over a period of around three months, Perez is alleged to have traded contracts linked to more than a dozen presidential events. These reportedly included a December prime-time address, Trump’s January appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a Medal of Honor ceremony in March and the State of the Union address.
The White House has previously said that a different operator would manage Trump’s teleprompter while Perez was on leave.
The activity first drew attention when Kalshi’s internal monitoring systems detected what it described as unusual trading patterns around certain event contracts.
Prediction market escalates concerns to regulators
After ABC News disclosed the allegations, Kalshi’s head of enforcement and legal affairs, Robert DeNault, wrote on X that the exchange’s surveillance team had quickly identified the trades, launched an internal review and referred the matter to the CFTC, which oversees federally regulated prediction markets.
Kalshi bars users from trading on information obtained through their jobs or other non-public sources. ABC News reported that once the firm identified the trades, it froze most of Perez’s reported profits and alerted federal regulators.
Federal prosecutors declined to pursue a criminal case, according to ABC News, but the CFTC is continuing to examine whether Perez used confidential information when entering event-based contracts.
The same report said Perez has acknowledged making some of the trades in question and is cooperating with the CFTC’s investigation.
The Perez case has become part of a broader series of enforcement actions focusing on prediction markets and the alleged misuse of privileged information.
Santos and other political figures also examined
In June, NPR reported that the Department of Justice and the CFTC opened an investigation into former U.S. Representative George Santos after Kalshi flagged suspicious activity in a contract on whether Santos would attend Trump’s February State of the Union address.
According to NPR, Kalshi froze Santos’ account and referred the trades to regulators after reviewing the transactions. Investigators alleged Santos bet that he would not attend the speech, despite publicly signalling beforehand that he intended to be there. Santos later told NPR he had been unaware of any investigation.
Earlier this year, Kalshi also suspended three federal election candidates after an internal review concluded they had traded contracts linked to their own contests. At the time, DeNault said that anyone able to influence the outcome of an event was in breach of the exchange’s rules, regardless of how much money was at stake.
The increased regulatory focus has coincided with questions over how traditional insider trading concepts apply to event-based contracts rather than conventional financial securities.
Wider clampdown on event-contract insider dealing
In April, federal prosecutors charged a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier with using advance knowledge related to an operation targeting former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to place profitable bets on Polymarket contracts.
More recently, prosecutors accused Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo of using confidential Google search ranking data to execute millions of dollars’ worth of prediction market trades before that information was made public.
Congress has also moved to scrutinise the sector. In May, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer launched an inquiry into insider trading protections at Kalshi and Polymarket, seeking details of their surveillance tools and enforcement practices.
In response to the mounting scrutiny, both platforms have expanded their compliance frameworks. Kalshi has rolled out new screening measures aimed at identifying users with direct links to the events on which they are betting, while Polymarket has tightened its trading rules, reinforced surveillance, and hired blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to support insider trading and market manipulation investigations.
