A longtime White House teleprompter operator has been placed on unpaid administrative leave after investigators alleged he used advance access to President Donald Trump’s speeches to place profitable bets on what the president would say.
Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant who has worked with Trump since the 2016 campaign, is accused of wagering on whether specific words and phrases would appear in more than a dozen presidential speeches. Federal investigators believe those trades generated more than $100,000 over three months.
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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump personally decided to remove Perez after learning of the allegations.
“The White House has extremely strict ethical guidelines with respect to issues like this,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “This individual will no longer be here… This was a decision by the president, so I think that speaks for itself.”
Investigators traced the bets to Trump’s speeches
Investigators say the bets were tied to Trump’s prepared remarks before they were delivered.
The wagers were placed through Kalshi, whose surveillance systems flagged Perez’s account in March before freezing the funds, opening an internal enforcement case and referring the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Perez typically had the final look at Trump’s prepared remarks before they were delivered and often handled last-minute edits to the president’s teleprompter, according to ABC News, which first reported the story.
Investigators say he placed bets tied to more than a dozen appearances, including Trump’s State of the Union address, remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos and a Medal of Honor ceremony.
ABC also reported investigators found instances where Perez changed or exited wagers after Trump skipped portions of prepared remarks during a speech, avoiding words he had already bet would be used. Trump has frequently joked that he goes “off teleprompter about 80%” of the time.
Case moves toward a civil settlement
Perez acknowledged some of the trades during interviews with regulators, ABC News reported. The CFTC later referred the matter to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to pursue criminal charges.
The case is now headed toward a civil resolution. Perez is negotiating a settlement that would require him to forfeit his profits and prohibit similar trading in the future.
Leavitt said she is not aware of any other White House employees who used nonpublic information to place bets on prediction markets.
Kalshi’s rules prohibit users from trading on information obtained through their employment.
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