Betting on the Boss's Script: Trump's Teleprompter Operator Suspended After $100K in Kalshi Speech Bets

The man who loads President Trump's speeches into the teleprompter allegedly used that front-row seat to win more than $100,000 on Kalshi — and now the CFTC wants the money back. The White House suspended the staffer Thursday after ABC News first reported the federal probe.

What Happened

Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant who has operated Trump's teleprompter since 2016, is under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for trades on Kalshi's so-called mention markets — contracts that pay out based on whether a public figure says specific words or phrases during a speech or event.

According to reporting from ABC News and follow-up coverage across the financial press, CFTC investigators found Perez placed bets tied to more than a dozen Trump speeches over a roughly three-month stretch, including a December primetime address, the president's January remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a March Medal of Honor ceremony. Kalshi itself flagged the suspicious trading activity. Total profits: north of $100,000.

Why It Matters

Mention markets have always carried an obvious insider problem — somebody writes those speeches, and somebody loads them into the teleprompter. This case turns the hypothetical into a live federal enforcement matter, and it lands squarely on Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market that has spent the past two years fighting to be treated as legitimate financial infrastructure rather than a betting app.

How regulators handle it will set a precedent for the entire event-contract industry, from Kalshi to Polymarket and the crypto-native prediction markets racing into the same space. Prediction markets have surged as a trading category, and insider-trading rules around them remain largely untested.

What's Next

Manhattan federal prosecutors were alerted but declined to open a criminal case, leaving this in civil territory. The CFTC has reportedly discussed settlement terms with Perez that would require him to hand back his profits and stay away from similar trades. Expect Kalshi and its rivals to tighten surveillance on mention markets — and expect Congress to notice that the first big prediction-market insider case came from inside the White House.

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