Trump’s Teleprompter Operator Made $100k Betting on His Speeches on Prediction Market: Report

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

A longtime teleprompter operator of President Donald Trump reportedly made six figures betting on what the president would say in his speeches.

News of the betting activity was revealed in a report from ABC News. According to the report, technical assistant Gabriel Perez allegedly placed bets on “more than a dozen” of Trump’s speeches using the prediction market Kalshi. Those bets even included Trump’s State of the Union address this past February.

The report continued:

Gabriel Perez, a technical assistant to the president who has been operating Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, is in talks with federal regulators to settle allegations he used his inside knowledge of the president’s speeches to win more than $100,000, the sources said.

According to the sources, Kalshi alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to the suspicious activity on its “Mentions” market, where users can bet on whether specific words, phrases or topics are uttered during a public speech.

Sources also claimed that the bets all took place over a three month period. The president’s speeches during that period included the State of the Union address, a primetime address in December, a speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January, and a Medal of Honor ceremony in March.

In a statement obtained by ABC News, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Perez was “fully cooperating with the CFTC.”

Shortly after ABC’s report, Kalshi sent a statement to Fox News confirming that its surveillance team “promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation.”

“We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected,” said Robert DeNault, the head of enforcement, “as we do in any referral.”

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