A White House teleprompter operator who raked in cash by placing bets on President Donald Trump’s speeches has been placed on unpaid leave, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
Technical assistant Gabriel Perez allegedly used his inside knowledge of Trump’s speeches, including this year’s State of the Union address, to place bets on the prediction market Kalshi, where he made over $100,000.
Other speeches Perez bet on reportedly included a primetime address in December, Trump’s January address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a Medal of Honor ceremony in March.
Asked repeatedly what the Trump administration is doing to ensure other staffers with inside information aren’t engaged in similar behavior, Leavitt deferred.
“There are strict ethical guidelines that explicitly state not to do this,” she said, while acknowledging she was unaware if other White House staffers might also participate in real-time betting markets.
According to ABC News, which broke the story, Perez had operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016.
Sources familiar with Kalshi’s processes told HuffPost the platform froze Perez’s account after it was flagged for irregular activity in March. As a result, $90,000 of the $100,000 remains accounted for.
“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation,” Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, said in a statement. “We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral.”
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates Kalshi and other so-called prediction markets, told HuffPost it would neither confirm nor deny any investigation into Perez.
The Trump administration has supported the surge of betting markets across the country. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. is a high-level investor and strategic advisor to Polymarket, a Kalshi competitor, which once allowed bettors to place money on the fate of an American pilot shot down in Iran.
