Trump puts teleprompter operator on unpaid leave after $100K prediction market betting scheme

President Trump placed his longtime teleprompter operator on unpaid administrative leave Thursday after the staffer allegedly pocketed more than $100,000 by betting on the content of presidential speeches, wagers he could win because he loaded the words into the machine before Trump ever reached the podium.

Gabriel Perez, a deputy assistant to the president who has run Trump's teleprompter since the 2016 campaign, placed bets on the prediction market platform Kalshi across more than a dozen speeches over a roughly three-month window, the New York Post reported. The speeches included the February State of the Union address, a January appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and a December primetime address to the nation.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the move at Thursday's briefing, calling it the president's decision and leaving no ambiguity about how Trump viewed the conduct.

"He believes it is deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace."

Perez will not operate the teleprompter for Trump's scheduled address to the nation Thursday night. A different operator will handle the job.

How the scheme worked, and who caught it

Kalshi operates what it calls a "mention market," where users wager on whether the president will use specific words, phrases, or address certain topics during public remarks. Perez, who received advance copies of Trump's prepared text so he could load it into the teleprompter, allegedly used that insider access to place bets he knew would pay off.

The platform's own surveillance team caught the pattern. Robert DeNault, Kalshi's head of enforcement and legal counsel, wrote on social media that the company "promptly flagged, investigated and referred these trades to the CFTC." He added that Kalshi has "been assisting regulators on this matter and provided all evidence that we collected, as we do with any referral."

Fox News reported that Kalshi's surveillance systems flagged the unusual trades in March, froze Perez's account, and referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. More than $90,000 in alleged profits remain frozen on the platform.

A CFTC spokesperson declined to comment. A source familiar with the matter told the Post that Perez is "fully cooperating with the CFTC on the matter."

White House ethics rules left no room for ambiguity

Leavitt made clear that the White House had warned staffers against exactly this kind of conduct. She pointed to strict ethical guidelines that prohibit personally profiting from one's position, rules communicated by the White House Counsel's office to every employee during onboarding.

"There are very strict ethical guidelines here at the White House that explicitly state not to do this, and the White House Counsel's office makes that clear to all of us who sign up to work in government on behalf of the president."

The White House also sent a memo to staff in March warning against using nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets. Whether that memo came before or after Kalshi flagged Perez's trades is not clear from available reporting.

Leavitt initially told reporters Perez would be on paid leave, then corrected herself: "I'm sorry, without pay. The administrative leave is unpaid. To be very clear, that was a decision by the president." The correction matters. The Trump White House, no stranger to personnel turbulence, drew a firm line: no taxpayer dollars for someone accused of abusing his access.

The Washington Examiner reported that Leavitt went further, stating Perez "will now no longer be working at the White House, so I think that answers all the questions on this matter."

A growing pattern: insider bets on government secrets

Perez's case is not the first time someone with government access has allegedly exploited prediction markets. In April, the Department of Justice filed what were described as the first-ever insider trading charges involving a prediction market. The defendant in that case was U.S. Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was charged with using classified, nonpublic information about a top-secret military raid on Venezuela to win approximately $409,000 on the platform Polymarket.

Van Dyke allegedly placed 13 bets totaling $33,000 between late December 2025 and early January 2026. The CFTC also filed civil charges. Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

The two cases differ in scale and sensitivity, one involved classified military intelligence, the other involved speech drafts, but the underlying problem is the same. People with privileged government access discovered they could monetize it on lightly regulated prediction platforms, and some of them did.

AP News reported that Kalshi's enforcement team flagged the suspicious trades and referred them to the CFTC, reinforcing that the platform's own internal controls, not a government audit, surfaced the problem.

The regulatory gap prediction markets expose

Prediction markets have exploded in popularity since the 2024 election cycle, when platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket drew mainstream attention for their real-time political odds. Kalshi's "mention markets", wagers on whether a president will say a specific word during a speech, sit at the intersection of entertainment, politics, and financial regulation. They also create obvious insider-trading risks for anyone who touches the text before it goes public.

Perez earned $175,000 a year as deputy assistant to the president. His alleged prediction market winnings, more than $100,000, represented a substantial side income derived entirely from access his government job provided. Newsmax reported that federal prosecutors declined to open a criminal investigation and that the CFTC is discussing a civil settlement that would require Perez to forfeit his profits and refrain from similar trading.

Leavitt said she was unsure whether Kalshi was available or blocked on White House computer systems, a question that remains unanswered and raises its own concerns about internal controls.

The Trump administration has shown willingness to act on personnel problems when they surface, and this case followed that pattern. The president did not wait for the CFTC to finish its work before removing Perez from his post. That is the right instinct. But the episode also raises a broader question: if a teleprompter operator can exploit his access this easily, what other government roles create similar vulnerabilities on these platforms?

ABC News first reported the CFTC investigation into Perez. CNN reported the $90,000-plus in frozen profits. The White House confirmed the rest from the briefing room podium.

Accountability started inside, not outside

Give credit where it is due: Kalshi caught this. The platform's surveillance team flagged the trades, froze the money, and referred the case to federal regulators. That is how market integrity is supposed to work. The CFTC's silence, declining even to confirm or deny the matter, is less reassuring, but the regulatory machinery appears to be turning.

The White House communications operation handled the disclosure cleanly. Leavitt named the conduct, called it a violation, confirmed the consequence, and attributed the decision to the president. No hedging. No anonymous background spin. No attempt to bury it on a Friday afternoon.

That transparency matters, because the temptation for any administration facing an embarrassing internal breach is to minimize it. The White House did the opposite. It called the conduct a disgrace and imposed a penalty the same day.

Several open questions remain. What specific words and topics did Perez bet on? Did anyone else in the White House know? Will the CFTC's civil settlement, if it materializes, include any bar on future government employment? And will Congress take up the broader question of whether prediction markets need tighter rules around government insiders?

The departures and disruptions that mark any administration are usually political. This one is different. A trusted aide allegedly turned his front-row seat into a betting window, and the system, for once, caught him before the taxpayers had to.

When the people closest to the president abuse their access for a quick payday, the only answer is a fast exit. Trump gave the right one.