A former White House teleprompter operator has been ordered to pay more than $172,000 for using inside information to bet on President Donald Trump’s speeches.
Gabriel Perez, who had worked as Trump’s technical assistant and teleprompter operator since 2016, was found to have placed trades on the prediction market platform Kalshi between December 2025 and February 2026. He used his advance access to presidential speeches to bet on which words and phrases Trump would use during major public addresses, including the State of the Union speech.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the settlement on Friday, ordering Perez to surrender profits of $107,539 and pay a civil penalty of $65,000. He has also been banned from trading on prediction markets for three years.
The CFTC said Perez had “misappropriated” his prior knowledge of Trump’s speeches to place bets “in breach of his duty of trust and confidence”. The agency noted that his civil penalty had been reduced due to his “exemplary co-operation” with the investigation.
Perez made the trades through Kalshi, a platform where users can bet on real-world events. The company’s surveillance team noticed unusual betting activity on “mention markets” — contracts where users predict whether a speaker will use specific terms, such as countries, economic words or campaign slogans .
Kalshi’s lead lawyer, Bobby DeNault, welcomed the decision: “It doesn’t matter who you are: violate our rules or federal law and you will face the consequences”.
The White House placed Perez on unpaid leave in July, with then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the trading “a breach of ethics” and “a disgrace”. She confirmed that Perez would no longer work at the White House.
In April 2026, the White House Management Office had sent a letter to aides warning them not to place bets on prediction markets using nonpublic information.
