President Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars betting on more than a dozen Trump appearances on the Kalshi prediction market, federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigators have found, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Gabriel Perez, the president’s technical assistant who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to resolve allegations that he used his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000, sources said.
According to sources, Kalshi alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), about suspicious activity in its “Mentions” market, where users can bet on whether certain words, phrases or topics will be uttered during a public speech.
“Our surveillance team promptly flagged these transactions and referred them to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,” Kalshi’s lead attorney Bobby Deno said in a statement provided to ABC News.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt told reporters Thursday afternoon after ABC News reported that Perez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave. Leavitt said she spoke with President Trump about this, and he considered it a “disgrace” and made the decision to place Perez on unpaid leave.
Leavitt said she was not aware of any other White House staffers making similar deals.
“The White House has strict ethical guidelines that we expect all staff and officials to follow,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told ABC News.
Gabriel Perez cleans a teleprompter before President Donald Trump speaks at the Institute for Future Investment Initiatives summit, March 27, 2026, in Miami Beach, Florida.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
A CFTC spokesman declined to comment.
In addition to the February State of the Union address, CFTC investigators found that Perez bet on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period, including a December prime-time speech, a January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Trump’s remarks in March during the Medal of Honor ceremony, the sources said.
Later in March, the White House issued an internal memo warning staffers against using proprietary information to place bets on prediction markets, sources previously confirmed to ABC News.
Perez continues to work as one of Trump’s teleprompter operators, a role he has held since Trump’s first presidential campaign.
Of Trump’s closest aides, Perez typically controls almost all of the president’s prepared remarks – and is known to often accept last-minute edits from Trump himself, sources say. It previously came under scrutiny from congressional and federal investigators over amendments made ahead of Trump’s speech on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump is known to often deviate from prepared statements, as he himself often admits.
“You know, when you come up here, you take a risk, especially me, because about 80 percent of the time I turn off the teleprompter,” Trump said during a speech in January at the Detroit Economic Club. Federal investigators believe this is another speech Perez was banking on.
In some cases, investigators found instances in which Perez backed out of certain bets mid-speech when Trump skipped a part of the speech that included a word he was previously confident would be mentioned, the sources said.
Perez has been interviewed by regulators in recent months and admitted to some of the transactions, according to people familiar with the investigation. At one point in the investigation, the CFTC alerted Manhattan federal prosecutors, who declined to open a criminal investigation, the sources said.
CFTC regulators have expressed a willingness to reach a settlement with Perez and have negotiated terms with him that would require Perez to return his profits and refrain from making similar transactions, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Kalshi has a policy against users placing bets based on information obtained in the course of their work.
Last month, the company updated its policy to require users to disclose their place of employment.
“If you have information because of your job or employment, something that you have a legal duty to not take, take it for yourself,” Deno told ABC News in May.
In recent months, the Justice Department has brought its first two cases of insider trading in prediction markets, involving a special forces soldier who allegedly bet on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and, separately, a Google employee who allegedly bet on finding users using internal company data. Both pleaded not guilty.
President Trump has occasionally criticized forecast markets, but in April said he supported them because the United States could be “left behind” if the country did not allow companies like Kalshi and Polymarket to operate.
“Well, unfortunately, the whole world has become something of a casino, and you look at what’s happening around the world, in Europe and all the places where bets are placed. I’ve never been much of a fan of this. I don’t like it conceptually, but it is what it is,” Trump told reporters.
Last October, Trump’s social media company, Trump Media and Technology Group, announced it was exploring the possibility of launching its own prediction market offering.