Gabriel Perez, who has served as President Donald Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016, has been accused of making over $100,000 in profits from betting on his boss’s speeches.
Perez has been in talks with federal regulators with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission about allegations that he bet on more than a dozen of the president’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi, per ABC News:
According to the sources, Kalshi alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to the suspicious activity on its “Mentions” market, where users can bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics are uttered during a public speech.
In addition to February’s State of the Union address, sources said CFTC investigators discovered that Perez placed bets on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including a December primetime address, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Trump’s remarks in March during a Medal of Honor ceremony.
Of all Trump’s closest aides, sources say Perez typically has the final eyes on nearly all of the president’s prepared remarks — and is often known to take last-minute edits from Trump himself. He previously came under scrutiny by congressional and federal investigators over the edits that were made prior to the delivery of Trump’s remarks surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bobby DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, said that the company’s “surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators.”
Speaking with reporters on Thursday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave, adding that President Trump made the decision after learning of the allegation.
“The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle.
According to NPR, the use of non-public information “to win big or manipulate markets on Kalshi is prohibited by the platform’s rules.”
“Such behavior could also be criminally prosecuted as wire fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering,” it added. “It is not clear if the Department of Justice is examining the case of Perez.”
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