Taking the luck out of betting might lessen the thrill, but it certainly ups the profit. White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez allegedly made more than $100,000 by using inside knowledge of the President’s speeches to place bets on prediction market Kalshi, according to ABC News.
Perez, who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is believed to have placed bets on more than a dozen speeches – including February’s State of the Union address. At times, he would even alter the bets mid-speech if he saw that the President was skipping a section on the teleprompter. Cockburn can’t help but respect the hustle.
His account’s winning streak was tracked and reported to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is now initiating a full investigation.
Back in March, the White House issued a memo that warned staff not to use nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets. “The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told ABC News. “The staffer in question is fully cooperating with the CFTC.”
In today’s White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt said the President considers the incident “deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace.”
President Trump’s personal views on prediction markets are conflicted. “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually, but it is what it is,” he said in April. “The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.”
The hands-off stance may have something to do with Donald Trump Jr.’s role in the casino-ification of the world. The Trump scion is a paid advisor to Kalshi and an unpaid advisor to Polymarket, the two biggest prediction markets, and he has spearheaded Truth Predict, which is set to be integrated into Truth Social.
Attempts to regulate this market have proven to be a headache. The CFTC, a federal-level regulator of prediction markets, frequently runs up against state-level gambling laws and taxes, but maintains the stance that prediction markets on topics like sports and politics are not equivalent to gambling and are, instead, for the “public interest.”
Currently, 16 states are in legal proceedings with prediction platforms, and six have been directly sued by CFTC, but federal courts frequently favor CFTC and associated platforms, according to the National Law Review.
Cockburn’s willing to bet this won’t be the last time prediction market users with inside info find their way into the headlines. Maybe he should start an account on Kalshi…
Comments