The White House has placed Gabriel Perez on unpaid administrative leave after reports that he used his work on Donald Trump’s teleprompter to place bets tied to the president’s speeches. Perez, who has operated Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is now under scrutiny for trades that sources said may have generated more than $100,000.
The move came after Kalshi’s surveillance team flagged the activity on its Mentions market and referred it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That is why Perez’s name is being searched now: a White House employee with unusual access to presidential remarks was accused of turning that access into a betting edge, and the case moved quickly from a platform alert to federal review.
Sources said investigators with the CFTC found Perez had placed bets on more than a dozen Trump speeches over a three-month period. Those wagers reportedly tracked events including a December primetime address, January remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, February’s State of the Union address and Trump’s March appearance at a Medal of Honor ceremony. The pattern matters because prediction markets allow users to bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics will be said during a public speech, making the timing of each wager central to the allegation.
Karoline Leavitt said Trump considered the situation a disgrace and made the decision himself to put Perez on leave. She also said she was unaware of any other White House staffers making similar trades. That leaves the White House trying to draw a line around one employee even as the facts point to a broader vulnerability in speech preparation and access.
The friction point is that Perez is still described by sources as one of Trump’s teleprompter operators even as the investigation continues and he has been sent home without pay. Sources also said investigators found moments when he backed out of some bets during speeches after Trump skipped a word Perez had expected to hear, a detail that deepens the case that the wagers may have depended on inside knowledge rather than chance. The White House had already warned staff in March not to use nonpublic information to bet on prediction markets.
Perez’s case is not starting from zero, either. He previously came under scrutiny from congressional and federal investigators over edits made before Trump’s remarks surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now the question is narrower and more immediate: whether federal regulators can reach a settlement with Perez over the betting allegations, and what that deal will say about the line between access and abuse inside the White House.
