White House teleprompter operator put on leave over alleged bets on Trump speeches

Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been placed on administrative leave, the White House said on Thursday, after reports that he used his position to win $100,000 by placing bets on the president’s speeches using the online prediction market Kalshi.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president had been informed about the situation, which she described as “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace”.Leavitt said the employee had been placed on unpaid administrative leave and that another person would be operating Trump’s teleprompter during Thursday night’s address to the nation on election integrity.“The White House has extremely strict ethical guidelines with respect to issues like this,” she added.Sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News that the employee, Gabriel Perez, was negotiating with federal regulators to resolve allegations that he used advance knowledge of the president’s speeches to generate more than $100,000 in winnings. One source told CNN that Perez earned more than $90,000 from the trades under investigation, though those profits have since been frozen.Perez has worked Trump’s teleprompter since 2016 as a technical assistant to the president.The activity reportedly centered on Kalshi’s “mentions” market, where participants can place bets on whether certain words, topics or phrases will be said during a public speech. According to the sources, Kalshi detected unusual betting patterns and alerted the federal agency responsible for overseeing prediction markets, the CFTC.“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC, and we are cooperating and assisting regulators,” Kalshi’s head of enforcement, Robert DeNault, said in a statement to ABC News.Government records show Perez earned an annual salary of $175,000 as a deputy assistant to the president and a technical adviser.The investigation comes as the Department of Justice has begun pursuing its first Insider Trading prosecutions tied to prediction markets. Those cases include a special forces soldier accused of betting on the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. In a separate case, a Google employee was accused of placing bets on user search activity using internal company information. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty.Insider Trading is an increasing concern as prediction markets grow in popularity. Kalshi, along with its main competitor Polymarket, had in March rushed to institute new industry guardrails and add new surveillance tools after two key senators announced legislation that could severely curtail the industry’s prospects.However, both platforms have found backing from the Trump-controlled Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Michael Selig, the CFTC chair, has said he would back Kalshi in any of its legal battles at the state level, arguing that federal law pre-empts any state law on this issue.In May, Kalshi issued fines to three US political candidates who bet on the outcomes of their own elections.Last month, federal authorities revealed they were investigating whether George Santos, the disgraced former Republican congressman from New York, engaged in Insider Trading on Klashi by betting on his own attendance at the State of the Union address.