Markets are again expected to be rocked by insider trading, as Trump’s teleprompter operator is investigated

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

On July 16, the U.S. President Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator is being investigated by federal regulators over alleged use of insider information to place bets on prediction market platforms, according to reports by CNBC and ABC. The White House has suspended him.

March 27, 2026, Miami Beach, Florida. Perez cleaning a teleprompter before Trump delivers remarks at a summit hosted by the Investment in the Future Initiative.

Gabriel Perez, the person involved, has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016. Among all assistants, he is typically the last to access and adjust the president’s speech text, and he even receives real-time edits from Trump on site. Citing sources, ABC and CNBC said that investigators from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found that Perez traded over roughly three months around more than 12 of Trump’s public speeches, covering events such as the State of the Union address, remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, prime-time speeches, and medal ceremony occasions.

He used advance knowledge of the speech content to place bets on the Kalshi platform’s “Mentions” markets about whether specific words, phrases, or topics would be said. Sometimes, when Trump skipped a portion of the prepared text, he would even pull back the bets mid-speech.

In March of this year, Kalshi’s monitoring system detected Perez’s trading. The pattern did not match typical buy-and-sell behavior and was further flagged by the market maker through its reporting channels. The platform then froze the account, withheld nearly all proceeds, and referred the case to the CFTC. Kalshi enforcement chief Robert DeNault said in a statement to CNBC that the monitoring team quickly flagged these trades; the platform is assisting regulators and has submitted the collected evidence.

CNBC reported that Perez’s total profit exceeded $90k, but most of the gains have been frozen by Kalshi. Perez is currently negotiating a settlement with the CFTC and could face outcomes including returning all profits and being barred from making similar trades. The Office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney has been informed, but decided not to open a criminal investigation.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed at a press briefing that Perez has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, no longer responsible for teleprompter operations, and will not continue working at the White House. CNBC reported that Leavitt said Trump himself knew about it and believed it was “very unfortunate—simply a disgrace,” and made the relevant decision personally. Leavitt emphasized that the White House has extremely strict ethics rules. In March this year, it issued a dedicated memorandum warning staff not to use non-public information to trade on prediction markets.

Perez’s case is not an isolated incident. As early as May 2025, California gubernatorial candidate Kyle Langford placed about $200 in trades on the prediction markets related to his campaign, earning very little but was ultimately fined $2,246 and banned from the platform for five years. From August to September 2025, a video editor, Artem Kaptur, who used advance knowledge from his job about a show’s schedule, was flagged for an unusually high win rate. He earned about $5,400, and in addition to having profits clawed back, was hit with an extra $15,000 penalty and banned for two years.

In February 2026, former congressman George Santos bet that he would not attend Trump’s State of the Union address while publicly promising he would attend, earning tens of thousands of dollars in the process. The account was then frozen and handed over to regulators and judicial authorities. In April the same year, three congressional candidates were found to have made small bets on markets related to their own elections; they were each fined from several hundred to several thousand dollars and banned for five years. Even for small profits or if profits were not withdrawn, trading on insider information still faces platform penalties and regulatory accountability.

Source: Internet

Another major prediction market platform, Polymarket, has also seen similar severe violations. As CNBC previously reported, during the period from December 2025 to January 2026, while U.S. special forces Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke participated in the military operations to capture Venezuela’s former president Maduro, he bought large numbers of contracts on Polymarket-related markets using classified information, profiting more than $400k. He was arrested this April and faces criminal and civil insider trading charges. In May the same year, Google software engineer Michele Spagnuolo was indicted, allegedly trading on Polymarket from October 2025 to December 2025 using the company’s internal “annual search trends” data and profiting about $1.2 million.

Insider trading shows up repeatedly in prediction markets because an information advantage can quickly be converted into excess returns, and some specific topic markets already have a sizable pool of capital that cannot be ignored. For example, on the Kalshi platform, the market “Which companies will be mentioned in July by Trump” has already had trading volume exceeding $150k. High-liquidity markets give insider holders ample room to profit, while ordinary users are at a disadvantage due to information asymmetry—damaging market price fairness and platform reputation.

To address these problems, platforms and regulators are trying multiple measures to curb them. Kalshi has recently updated its policies, requiring traders in certain markets to disclose occupational information, and strengthening advance prevention by relying on KYC procedures, around-the-clock abnormal trading detection, and reporting channels. In the first quarter of this year, the platform launched more than 150 investigations, froze more than 100 potentially suspicious trades, and referred more than 20 cases to law enforcement agencies.

On the regulatory side, in recent enforcement actions, the CFTC has repeatedly cited rules prohibiting the misuse of non-public information and market manipulation. It has also worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to advance criminal accountability, meaning conduct involving trades using government internal information or corporate data could face charges for serious crimes such as fraud and money laundering, as well as several years of imprisonment. The White House has also, through an internal memorandum, made clear that government employees are not allowed to take part in such bets.