Federal regulators have found that a person closely connected to President Trump's speeches, the operator of his teleprompter, had been placing bets on those very speeches, according to sources describing what investigators uncovered. The finding has drawn attention because it touches on the fast-growing world of prediction markets and the question of whether someone with inside knowledge can quietly profit from it.
According to those sources, the teleprompter operator, identified as Gabriel Perez, placed his wagers over a period of about three months. In that time, investigators say, he bet on more than a dozen of the president's speeches, among them the State of the Union address. Across those bets, according to the account of what investigators found, he is said to have made more than $100,000.
The bets were placed on Kalshi, a prediction-market website where users can wager on future events. The relevant markets were so-called mentions markets, which ask a simple question about a coming speech: what will the speaker mention? A list of words is offered, and users can bet yes or no on whether each one will be uttered, turning the content of a speech into a series of tradable outcomes.
What made this particular arrangement striking, according to the sources, was the position the bettor held. The person operating the teleprompter is, by the nature of the job, the person closest to the president's words before he says them, scrolling the text as it is delivered. That gave him a clear informational advantage over other bettors when guessing which words would and would not make it into a given address.
Investigators say the operator did not simply place his bets in advance and wait. According to the account of their findings, he also traded out of positions in real time while a speech was under way. If, for example, he could see that the president had skipped a section or was straying from the prepared remarks, he could move on a bet tied to a word in the part being passed over, switching a yes position to no before the outcome became clear to everyone else.
The matter did move through part of the enforcement process. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator that oversees markets of this kind, made a referral to the Department of Justice, flagging what it had found. The Justice Department, however, declined to prosecute. It was not made clear exactly why that decision was reached, but the referral and the response were confirmed as steps in the inquiry as it unfolded over recent months.
For those watching the rapid rise of prediction markets, the episode raises pointed questions about insider trading in a corner of finance that is still taking shape. Betting on the words of a speech is a relatively new phenomenon, and a case in which the person with the most intimate advance knowledge of those words appears to have profited from them highlights how existing rules may struggle to keep pace with the products now on offer.
Kalshi itself took action once it flagged the activity. According to the account of the matter, the platform did not publicly identify the person at the time but froze his account after flagging the alleged bets, a step that prevented him from capturing most of the profits. The company said it had cooperated with the regulators and provided the evidence it had collected, as it does in any referral, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it could not publicly confirm or deny an investigation.
The White House weighed in once the allegations came to its attention. The press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, confirmed the matter and said the administration held all of its staffers and officials to strict ethics guidelines. Officials said the staffer was now fully cooperating with the CFTC and had been placed on unpaid administrative leave after the allegations were brought to the White House's attention. The press secretary later said she had spoken to the president about the reporting and that he considered it a disgrace that someone would bet on his words, especially in real time.
As the process moved forward, the teleprompter operator was said to be in talks to reach a settlement with the federal regulators. Sources indicated that the range of speeches involved went beyond the highest-profile addresses that are shared with the press in advance under embargo; one of the events he is said to have bet on was a Medal of Honor ceremony held a few months ago, which was not distributed to journalists beforehand, underlining that his advantage came from seeing the words in the teleprompter itself rather than from any embargoed text.
The revelation also arrives amid broader scrutiny of Kalshi and similar platforms, which have drawn regulatory attention as they expand the range of events people can bet on. With federal regulators having reviewed the case and the Justice Department having stepped back from it, the affair is likely to feed the debate over how far prediction markets should be allowed to go and what safeguards should apply to those with privileged information.