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See the full story · 1 sourcesPresident Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator no longer works in government after he was placed on unpaid leave over alleged insider trading
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Donald Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator no longer works for the government after federal investigators determined he made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on the president’s speeches on the prediction market Kalshi.
Gabriel Perez, who has traveled and worked alongside Trump for roughly a decade, “no longer works in the federal government,” a White House official told The Independent. The official would not tell The Independent whether he was fired or if he resigned.
Perez was among the highest-paid aides in Trump’s second administration, earning a salary of $175,000 as “deputy assistant to the president and technical advisor,” according to a White House report submitted to Congress.
He was placed on unpaid administrative leave earlier this month following reports that Kalshi referred an internal probe to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for an investigation into insider trading. Perez allegedly used his knowledge of the president’s speeches to place bets on whether Trump would say specific words or phrases to rake in more than $100,000 in Kalshi winnings.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this month that Trump personally made the decision to put Perez on unpaid leave. She called the allegations “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace.”
Perez, who has worked for Trump since his 2016 presidential campaign, is among a handful of top aides who sees the president’s remarks before they are delivered. “I have a guy, Gabe,” Trump said during a campaign event in Reno, Nevada in 2024. “He’s excellent. I’ve had some real bad ones, but I have Gabe.”
According to ABC News , which first reported the investigation, Perez placed bets on Trump’s State of the Union address in February and more than a dozen other events over a three-month period, including a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a Medal of Honor ceremony.
Kalshi’s surveillance team “promptly flagged and referred these trades” to federal investigators and the company is “cooperating and assisting regulators,” Kalshi's head of enforcement, Bobby DeNault, said in a statement earlier this month.
“I think this played out exactly how it should,” Leavitt told reporters. “Kalshi notified the [the commission] of suspicious activity. They investigated that, identified the individual, and now he will no longer be working at the White House.”
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan reportedly declined to open a criminal investigation, though regulators have allegedly reached a settlement deal with Perez that would require him to return his profits and refrain from making similar bets.
Critics fear that government employees’ access to sensitive, nonpublic information can be used to move global markets and potentially shape geopolitics, made all the easier with prediction market websites.
Lawmakers and several state legislatures are considering measures to restrict government officials’ use of websites such as Polymarket and Kalshi, and the White House has warned its staff against similar transactions after a surge of suspicious trading related to the U.S. war with Iran.
Federal ethics rules already bar employees from gambling on government property, but the White House Management Office sent a memo to all White House staff in March to warn against using nonpublic information for private gain.
That warning followed a flurry of suspiciously well-timed activity on betting websites, including a U.S. Army soldier accused of using classified information about ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s capture to make more than $400,000 on Polymarket.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke faces three counts of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He also faces one count of wire fraud and one count of an unlawful monetary transaction.
Van Dyke allegedly used his access to classified information in a series of bets waging more than $33,000 on the prediction market before Trump announced Maduro’s capture in January, according to federal prosecutors.
In April, Kalshi announced three congressional candidates wagered on the outcome of their own elections . The company fined and suspended Ezekiel Enriquez, who ran in a Republican primary for a House seat in Texas; Matt Klein, a Democratic state senator running for a House seat in Minnesota; and Mark Moran, who is running as an independent in Virginia's Senate race.
The president’s social media platform Truth Social, however, has announced plans to launch its own prediction market.
Trump has said the U.S. would be “left out in the cold” if the government prevents companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket from operating.
“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino, and you look at what’s going on all over the world in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things,” he told reporters in April. “I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is.”
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